From: Ian Macdonald <ian@...>
Date: 2003-05-30T06:58:35+09:00
Subject: substitution weirdness

Hi,

Here's some behaviour I don't immediately understand:

irb(main):119:0> foo = "'123"
=> "'123"
irb(main):120:0> foo.gsub(/'/, "\\'")
=> "123123"

Why does the apostrophe get replaced with a copy of the text that
follows it?

I'm trying to replace every instance of ' with \' but it's proving very
tricky. Nothing I can come up with seems to work, no matter how many
backslashes I use, whether I use single or double quotes, whether or not
I use gsub with a block, etc.

This should be so easy, but it has me stumped.

Ian
-- 
Ian Macdonald               | It is better to live rich than to die rich.
System Administrator        | -- Samuel Johnson 
ian@caliban.org             | 
http://www.caliban.org      | 
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