From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2010-01-13T22:11:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Regex

Sriram Varahan wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a string as a = "&0&1"
> 
> I need to pass this value with the ampersand escaped to another command
> in my program.
> 
> So I tried something like this:
> 
> irb(main):038:0> a.gsub(/&/,"\\&")
> => "&0&1"

That's because \& has a special meaning in a replacement string ("the 
matched string"). Either use a block to provide the replacement value 
(which doesn't do the backslash replacement), or put two backslashes in 
the replacement string.

irb(main):002:0> a.gsub(/&/) { "\\&" }
=> "\\&0\\&1"
irb(main):003:0> a.gsub(/&/, "\\\\&")
=> "\\&0\\&1"

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