From: Josh Cheek <josh.cheek@...>
Date: 2010-12-30T10:01:57+09:00
Subject: Re: how can i include a double quote in a string

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On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 6:31 PM, Rick Tan <bellcolt@hotmail.com> wrote:

> i need to a include a double quote in a string without it being escaped.
> For example
>
> astring="first few characters"
> bstring="last characters"
>
> When i tried
>   newstring = astring + '"' + bstring + '"'
>
> newstring ended up as 'first few characters\"last characters\"'
>
> What trick can i use to obtain a string 'first few characters "last
> characters"' out of the 2 string variables.  That is for ruby not to
> escaped the double quote.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
>
I assume you are doing this in irb, and looking at the result. If that is
the case, irb inspects whatever it receves, since it receives a string with
quotes in it, to display a string, it wraps the string in quotes. Thus it
has to differentiate the internal quotes from the external, and escapes them
before displaying the result to you. However, they are not _actually_
escaped, only displayed that way by some types of displaying. Try printing
it out and you will see. Here are five ways to do this, I think either the
first one, or %Q are the best, because they are easiest to read / most
straightforward..


a = "first"
b = "last"

[ "\"#{a}\" #{b}" ,
  '"' + a + '" ' + b,
  '"' << a << '" ' << b,
  %Q("#{a}" #{b}),
  <<-ENDOFSTRING.strip,
  "#{a}" #{b}
  ENDOFSTRING
].each do |str|
  puts "normal:     #{str}"
  puts "inspected:  #{str.inspect}"
  puts
end

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