From: Rob Biedenharn <Rob@...>
Date: 2010-01-12T05:02:43+09:00
Subject: Re: File::exists?( "filename with a blank in it" )

On Jan 11, 2010, at 2:50 PM, Ralph Shnelvar wrote:
> Matthew K. Williams wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Ralph Shnelvar wrote:
>>> Newbie here/
>>>
>>> Consider
>>>
>>> IMAGEMAGICK_EXE_PATH = '"f:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.5.8- 
>>> Q16\convert.exe"'
>>
>> The issue isn't so much that you have a blank in it as that you've  
>> added
>> an extra set of quotes -- in the example above, your filename has  
>> double
>> quotes at the beginning and end.  Drop the double quotes and it  
>> should
>> work fine, assuming the path is correct.
>>
>> Matt
>
> Isn't a Windows pathname with surrounding double quotes a valid
> pathname?!?!?
>
> What's the best Ruby-esque way to stip out surrounding double quotes  
> if
> they exist?
>
> And ,yes, your example and Rob Biedenharn's example both work.
>
> Thank you to both.


Well, perhaps you're thinking of the quotes that are needed/used to  
supply a path containing spaces to a command-line program.

In any case, you could remove quotes with:

def unquote(string)
   string.sub(/\A(['"])(.*)\1\z/, '\2')
end

unquote(IMAGEMAGICK_EXE_PATH)


irb> IMAGEMAGICK_EXE_PATH = '"f:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.5.8- 
Q16\convert.exe"'
=> "\"f:\\Program Files\\ImageMagick-6.5.8-Q16\\convert.exe\""

Note that the canonical representation of the string makes the  
included double-quotes obvious.

irb> def unquote(string)
irb>     string.sub(/\A(['"])(.*)\1\z/, '\2')
irb>   end
=> nil
irb> unquote(IMAGEMAGICK_EXE_PATH)
=> "f:\\Program Files\\ImageMagick-6.5.8-Q16\\convert.exe"

Compare this result to the value of IMAGEMAGICK_EXE_PATH itself above.

irb> unquote(unquote(IMAGEMAGICK_EXE_PATH))
=> "f:\\Program Files\\ImageMagick-6.5.8-Q16\\convert.exe"

And this is save against a path without quotes, too.

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn		http://agileconsultingllc.com
Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com