Super.inspect returning escaped control chars? Why?

ruby-talk
1

Hello,

I am new to Ruby please help...

Two questions...

1) I do not know why Contact#inspect returns an escaped string (e.g. \n
changed to \\n, etc.). Can someone help?

I have a Classes Contact and Person...

class Contact
#...
def inspect
    result = ""

    # Print our email addresses...
    # result << "\n"
    result << "Email Addresses:"
    email_addresses.each do |e|
      result << "\n\t#{e.type.to_s.capitalize}: " << e.to_s
    end unless email_addresses.nil?

    # Print our phone numbers...
    result << "\n"
    result << "Phone Numbers:"
    phone_numbers.each do |e|
      result << "\n\t#{e.type.to_s.capitalize}: " << e.to_s
    end unless phone_numbers.nil?

    # Print our web sites...
    result << "\n"
    result << "Web Sites:"
    web_sites.each do |e|
      result << "\n\t#{e.type.to_s.capitalize}: " << e.to_s
    end unless web_sites.nil?

    # This prints an unescaped string, if uncommented...
    #puts result

                # But result returns an escaped string! Why?
    result
  end
#...
end

class Person < Contact
#...
def inspect
    result =
      "Name: #{@last}, #{@first}" \
        << "\nPrefix: #{@prefix}" \
        << "\nMiddle: #{@middle_initial}" \
        << "\nSuffix: #{@suffix}"

    result << "\n"

    # Everything above this returns an unescaped string...

                # super.inspect returns an escaped string! Why?
    result << super.inspect
  end
#...
end

2) Is there any built-in method/class method to unescape an escaped
string (e.g. convert "\\n", "\\t", etc. to "\n", "\t", etc.?

Thank you much.

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2

Please can you turn this into a standalone program which demonstrates
the problem?

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3

super.inspect doesn't do what you expect. "super" calls the method of
the same name in the ancestor class (ie 'inspect'). You are then calling
inspect on the value returned.

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4

Brian Candler wrote:

super.inspect doesn't do what you expect. "super" calls the method of
the same name in the ancestor class (ie 'inspect'). You are then calling
inspect on the value returned.

Thank you, that was the problem. I am user to C#, C++, etc. where you
would call the base class' method explicitly. So, I was essentially
calling super.inspect.inspect.

Thank you.

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