using a \ in gsub

[brandon coleman]

In IRB if I type the following:
"te/st".gsub('/','\')
into irb, IRB screws up.
but if I type
File.expand_path($0).gsub('/','\\')
I get te\\st. what gives?? how do I get ruby to come up with te\st?

what I am trying to do is this:
File.expand_path($0).gsub('/','\') because with ruby in windows it uses
a / instead of a \ for path names which is screwing my pathnames up..
any suggestions???

 

[Austin Ziegler]

In IRB if I type the following:
"te/st".gsub('/','\')
into irb, IRB screws up.
but if I type
File.expand_path($0).gsub('/','\\')
I get te\\st. what gives?? how do I get ruby to come up with te\st?

what I am trying to do is this:
File.expand_path($0).gsub('/','\') because with ruby in windows it uses
a / instead of a \ for path names which is screwing my pathnames up..
any suggestions???

File.expand_path($0).gsub(%r{/}) { "\\" }

-austin

 

[brandon coleman]

File.expand_path($0).gsub(%r{/}) { "\\" }

-austin

that would give me two c:\\ruby\\ whatever and if I remove a \ it still
gives me an error...

 

[Stefan Lang]

that would give me two c:\\ruby\\ whatever and if I remove a \ it
still gives me an error...

Are you testing this in irb? You should know
that \ is used as escape character inside of Ruby string
literals. Thus if you want an actual backslash in the string,
you have to escape it with another backslash.
irb prints a ruby string literal to stdout, thus you see a
double backslash for every actual backslash in the string.

Try:

puts File.expand_path($0).gsub(%r{/}, "\\")

to see the "real" contents of the resulting string.

BTW: The literal "\" gives an error because the backslash
before the second quote tells Ruby to include the quote
in the string instead of interpreting it as string delimiter.

 

[Rob Biedenharn]