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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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> i need to a include a double quote in a string without it being escaped.
> For example
>
> astring=3D"first few characters"
> bstring=3D"last characters"
>
> When i tried
> =C2=A0 newstring =3D 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. =C2=A0That is for ruby not to
> escaped the double quote.
>
> Thanks in advance.

irb> newstring
=3D> "first few characters\"last characters\""
irb> puts newstring
first few characters"last characters"
=3D> 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.

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

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 6:31 PM, Rick Tan <> 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/.
>
>
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

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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