From: mike@... (Mike Stok)
Date: 2004-02-16T01:15:04+09:00
Subject: Re: YAML and quoted strings

In article <slrnc2ul0o.hni.childNOSPAM@child.ha.pwr.wroc.pl>,
Marek Janukowicz  <childNOSPAM@t17.ds.pwr.wroc.pl> wrote:

>How can I store/load a quoted string using YAML? The problem is, YAML
>removes quotes when loading a file and I need to know whether the string
>was quoted or not. The only way I have found so far is to use "'some
>string'", but this is a bit ugly for me.

It depends what you mean by a quoted string.  If you mean a string
containing quotes then YAML handles them just fine, for instance

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'yaml'

FILE_NAME = 'test.yml'

hash = {
    'key1' => %w{ 'foo' "bar" O'Brien }
}

puts "storing: #{hash.inspect}"

File.open(FILE_NAME, 'w') do |f|
    f << hash.to_yaml
end

File.open(FILE_NAME) do |f|
    retrieved = YAML.load(f)
    puts "retrieved: #{retrieved.inspect}"
    puts "test element: #{retrieved['key1'][0]}"
end

produces this output:

storing: {"key1"=>["'foo'", "\"bar\"", "O'Brien"]}
retrieved: {"key1"=>["'foo'", "\"bar\"", "O'Brien"]}
test element: 'foo'

and the content of test.yml is

---
key1:
  - "'foo'"
  - "\"bar\""
  - "O'Brien"

Without a little more context it is difficult to go much further.

Hope this helps,

Mike

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