From: Ammar Ali <ammarabuali@...>
Date: 2010-11-22T08:27:06+09:00
Subject: Re: gsub and backslashes

On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 11:02 PM, Brian Candler <b.candler@pobox.com> wrote:
> Ralph Shnelvar wrote in post #962847:
>>   "\\1\\2\\3".gsub(/\\/,"\\\\")
>
> Here you are replacing one backslash with one backslash.
>
> The trouble is, in the *replacement* string, '\1' has a special meaning
> (insert the value of the first capture). Because of this, a literal
> backslash is backslash-backslash.

That's a keen observation, but the fact that they happen to be
back-references doesn't seem to play a part in this situation.

>> "\\a\\b\\c".gsub(/\\/,"\\\\")
=> "\\a\\b\\c"
>> "\\a\\b\\c".gsub(/\\/,"\\\\\\")
=> "\\\\a\\\\b\\\\c"

Regards,
Ammar