From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2011-01-14T02:12:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Weird error using String#[]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Jason Mcdonald <finn0013@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks, Robert. The original post has the script with both expected and
> unexpected outcomes.

I thought more of a small script which does not need network
connection etc. and rather works with static text.

> What you show with the encoding screwing up the
> offsets makes total sense.

:-)

> What I'm at a loss for is why it affects the hard coded portion of the
> string passed to puts:
>
> Example:
> puts "ret: #{ret}"
>
> Output:
> Oet: [part but not all of the expected string - 2 chars too short]

Well, that's easy:

irb(main):014:0> s = "\rA\tB"
=> "\rA\tB"
irb(main):015:0> puts "ret: #{s}"
Aet:    B
=> nil
irb(main):016:0> p "ret: #{s}"
"ret: \rA\tB"
=> "ret: \rA\tB"
irb(main):017:0> s = "\rAet: B"
=> "\rAet: B"
irb(main):018:0> puts "ret: #{s}"
Aet: B
=> nil
irb(main):019:0> p "ret: #{s}"
"ret: \rAet: B"
=> "ret: \rAet: B"

To debug you should use p and not puts.

> At this point I plan on using Nokogiri but I am really curious what is
> causing what I describe above. This is a weirdness for how strings /
> puts works that I'd like to understand and keep in mind going forward.

It's probably rather about how your terminal works than how strings work. :-)

Kind regards

robert

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