How can i include a double quote in a string

ruby-talk
1

i need to a include a double quote in a string without it being escaped.
For example

astring="first few characters"
bstring="last characters"

When i tried
   newstring = astring + '"' + bstring + '"'

newstring ended up as 'first few characters\"last characters\"'

What trick can i use to obtain a string 'first few characters "last
characters"' out of the 2 string variables. That is for ruby not to
escaped the double quote.

Thanks in advance.

···

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2

i need to a include a double quote in a string without it being escaped.
For example

astring="first few characters"
bstring="last characters"

When i tried
newstring = astring + '"' + bstring + '"'

newstring ended up as 'first few characters\"last characters\"'

What trick can i use to obtain a string 'first few characters "last
characters"' out of the 2 string variables. That is for ruby not to
escaped the double quote.

Thanks in advance.

newstring

=> "first few characters\"last characters\""

puts newstring

first few characters"last characters"
=> nil

The quotation marks aren't actually escaped, they're just shown that
way on inspection to differentiate them from the quotation marks
delimiting the entire string.

3

I assume you are doing this in irb, and looking at the result. If that is
the case, irb inspects whatever it receves, since it receives a string with
quotes in it, to display a string, it wraps the string in quotes. Thus it
has to differentiate the internal quotes from the external, and escapes them
before displaying the result to you. However, they are not _actually_
escaped, only displayed that way by some types of displaying. Try printing
it out and you will see. Here are five ways to do this, I think either the
first one, or %Q are the best, because they are easiest to read / most
straightforward..

a = "first"
b = "last"

[ "\"#{a}\" #{b}" ,
  '"' + a + '" ' + b,
  '"' << a << '" ' << b,
  %Q("#{a}" #{b}),
  <<-ENDOFSTRING.strip,
  "#{a}" #{b}
  ENDOFSTRING
].each do |str|
  puts "normal: #{str}"
  puts "inspected: #{str.inspect}"
  puts
end

···

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 6:31 PM, Rick Tan <bellcolt@hotmail.com> wrote:

i need to a include a double quote in a string without it being escaped.
For example

astring="first few characters"
bstring="last characters"

When i tried
  newstring = astring + '"' + bstring + '"'

newstring ended up as 'first few characters\"last characters\"'

What trick can i use to obtain a string 'first few characters "last
characters"' out of the 2 string variables. That is for ruby not to
escaped the double quote.

Thanks in advance.

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

4

Rick Tan wrote in post #971378:

i need to a include a double quote in a string without it being escaped.
For example

astring="first few characters"
bstring="last characters"

When i tried
   newstring = astring + '"' + bstring + '"'

newstring ended up as 'first few characters\"last characters\"'

$ irb --simple-prompt

a = "foo" + '"' + "bar"

=> "foo\"bar"

puts a

foo"bar << NOTE
=> nil

puts a.size

7 << NOTE
=> nil

So the string is 7 characters: f o o " b a r

irb uses #inspect to display the value of each expression you type.
String#inspect escapes double-quotes, so that the value is a valid
string literal (i.e. could be pasted back in to Ruby)

···

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