From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2003-03-28T17:50:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie question:Does Ruby have the structure of hash's array like Perl does?

On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 05:15:49PM +0900, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> > Perl's $" just like OFS in awk which is the output field separator,i.e. 
> > that is printed between fields.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand.  Can you give me an example of Perl code that 
> uses $"?
> 
> Regardless, its almost certain that Ruby's equivalent is $".
> AFAIK Ruby has carbon-copied nearly all of Perl's special variables.
> 
> Please do show me what $" does.  I'd like to know.

If you interpolate an array into a double-quoted string, it's the separator
used to join them. In Ruby it would be the default separator for join, which
is $,

$ perl -e '@a=("jim","bob"); $"="-"; print "@a\n"'
jim-bob

$ ruby -e 'a=["jim","bob"]; puts a.join("-")'
jim-bob

$ ruby -e 'a=["jim","bob"]; $,="-"; puts a.join'
jim-bob

Perl has $, too, but that's used as the output field separator when giving
multiple variables to 'print'. There's no distinction in Ruby, since "print
a,b,c" is pretty much the same as "print [a,b,c]"

Regards,

Brian.