From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-07-25T23:27:44+09:00
Subject: Re: weird backsplash behaviour inside single quotes

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 8:34 AM, Michal Suchanek <hramrach@centrum.cz> wrote:
> Hello
>
> I observe that backslashed characters normally produce backaslash plus
> the character inside single quotes.
>
>
> The understandable exception are single quotes. However, in Ruby
> double backslash also produces a single backslash.
>
> irb(main):008:0> '\a'
> => "\\a"
> irb(main):009:0> '\\a'
> => "\\a"
> irb(main):010:0> '\\\a'
> => "\\\\a"
> irb(main):011:0> '\\\\a'
> => "\\\\a"
> irb(main):012:0>
>
>
> I think this is needlessly confusing. Usually single quotes are as
> literal as possible.

The backslash is a tool to escape the single quote inside a quote,
therefore it must escape itself as well.

Todd