From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-12-18T07:56:24+09:00
Subject: Re: gsub("\\", "\\\\") seems unintuitive

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Joe Peck <joe@notsleepy.com> wrote:
> Joe Peck wrote:
>> I stumbled onto this thread trying to figure out a similar problem...
>
> Dangit, I didn't mean to post the above message :)
>
> Okay, I need to read a site name (like "joe.com") and put a \ in front
> of the period (so it would be "joe\.com").  I'm having trouble with
> this, I can't seem to get only ONE \ in front of the period...
>
>>> "joe.com".gsub(/\./, "\\\.")
> => "joe\\.com"
>>> "joe.com".gsub(/\./, "\\\\.")
> => "joe\\.com"
>
> Anyone have a clue what to do?  I'm probably missing something simple.

You are looking at a string with escaping characters (i.e. what it
would look like in double quotes).  You can verify this by using #puts
or "joe.com".gsub('.', '\.').length.

hth,
Todd