What does %q do?

[Gaba Luschi]

What does %q do in ruby?

 

[John Feminella]

%q{abc} is equivalent to writing "abc". It's most useful when you have
a string literal that contains a lot of characters you'd need to
escape. Compare:

"Gaba Luschi asked the ruby-talk list, \"What does %q do?\""

vs.

%q{Gaba Luschi asked the ruby-talk list, "What does %q do?"}

And note they're equal:

a = %q{Gaba Luschi asked the ruby-talk list, "What does %q do?"}
b = "Gaba Luschi asked the ruby-talk list, \"What does %q do?\""

a == b

=> true

~ jf
--
John Feminella
Principal Consultant, BitsBuilder
LI: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnxf
SO: http://stackoverflow.com/users/75170/

 

[John Feminella]

Whoops, small typo:

%q{abc} is equivalent to writing "abc".

should read:

%q{abc} is equivalent to writing 'abc' (single quotes).

By contrast, %Q{abc} is equivalent to writing "abc" (double quotes).
You can see the difference when you try to substitute variables:

f =3D "apple"

%q{#{f}} =3D> "\#{f}"
%Q{#{f}}

=3D> "apple"

~ jf
--
John Feminella
Principal Consultant, BitsBuilder
LI: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnxf
SO: http://stackoverflow.com/users/75170/

%q{abc} is equivalent to writing "abc". It's most useful when you have
a string literal that contains a lot of characters you'd need to
escape. Compare:

"Gaba Luschi asked the ruby-talk list, \"What does %q do?\""

vs.

%q{Gaba Luschi asked the ruby-talk list, "What does %q do?"}

And note they're equal:

a =3D %q{Gaba Luschi asked the ruby-talk list, "What does %q do?"}
b =3D "Gaba Luschi asked the ruby-talk list, \"What does %q do?\""

a =3D=3D b

=C2=A0=3D> true

~ jf
--
John Feminella
Principal Consultant, BitsBuilder
LI: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnxf
SO: http://stackoverflow.com/users/75170/

 

[Josh Cheek]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Also, lowercase q is like single quotes, but uppercase Q is like double
quotes:

%q(1#{1+1}3) # => "1\#{1+1}3"
%Q(1#{1+1}3) # => "123"