From: Tom Cloyd <tomcloyd@...>
Date: 2009-02-11T13:44:18+09:00
Subject: Re: regex to escape special characters

badboy wrote:
> Jon Garvin schrieb:
>   
>> I've got the following string...
>>
>> "This is ( a test"
>>
>> And I want to do a regex gsub on it to turn it into...
>>
>> "This is \( a test"
>>
>> In irb, If I start with...
>>
>>  "This is ( a test".gsub(/[\(]/,'\&')        => "This is ( a test"
>>
>> And then progressively added more backslashes, I get the following
>> results, none of which are what I'm looking for.  The second one is,
>> IMO, the one that should work.
>>
>> "This is ( a test".gsub(/[\(]/,'\\&')   => "This is ( a test"
>> "This is ( a test".gsub(/[\(]/,'\\\&')  => "This is \\& a test"
>> "This is ( a test".gsub(/[\(]/,'\\\\&') => "This is \\& a test"
>> "This is ( a test".gsub(/[\(]/,'\\\\\&')=> "This is \\( a test"
>>
>>
>> Am I just having a serious case of the mondays, or is there a bug in how
>> Ruby deals with \ characters when trying to represent an actual single \
>> character?
>>
>> I'm using ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i486-linux]
>>
>>     
> you know Regexp.escape ?
>
>
>   
Yikes...thanks for the reminder. I always seem to find 6 hard ways to do 
something before learning (and occasionally discovering) an easy way. 
Regexp.escape solve LOTS of problems quickly. ~t.

-- 

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Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC - Private practice Psychotherapist
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