From: "Gulyás Attila" <toraritte@...>
Date: 2013-01-16T22:35:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Escaped backslashes in input strings - newbie question

Check out Regexp.escape ->
http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/Regexp.html#method-c-escape

> Regexp.escape( '\foo\bar' )
 => "\\\\foo\\\\bar"
> Regexp.escape( '\foo\bar' ).gsub /\\\\/,''
=> "foobar"

hope this helps.

regards
attila


On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 1:58 PM, John Sampson <jrs.idx@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I am trying to find a way of removing escaped characters in input strings
> from a file made by another program. That is to say, two-character sequences
> in which the first character is a backslash.
>
> I would have thought in my naivete that gsub(/\\./,"") would do this, but
> no. I am using Ruby 1.9 hence Oniguruma.
>
> Firstly, are the strings input from a text file treated as single- or
> double-quoted?
>
> Secondly, are there alternatives to gsub?
>
> Thirdly, are there any *clear* and *exhaustive* treatments of the question
> of escaped backslashes in Ruby - in input strings in programs, in IRB, with
> single-quoted strings, double-quoted strings and other situations? I guess a
> multidimensional table might be useful to determine how to escape a
> backslash, if it can be done at all.
>
> Regards
>
> John Sampson
>