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ruby

Use single quote in string inspection

I have the following program:

args = ["a", "b"]
cmd_args = args.map{|x| x.inspect}
str =  cmd_args.join(' ')
puts str

The output is:

"a" "b"

I expect the output to be like the following (sub-string quoted with ' instead of "):

'a' 'b'

I don't want to do a gsub after string inspect because, in my real system, substring might contain ". For example:

args = ['a"c', "b"]
cmd_args = args.map{|x| x.inspect.gsub('"', '\'')}
str =  cmd_args.join(' ')
puts str

will output:

'a\'c' 'b'

The " between a and c is wrongly replaced. My expected output is:

'a"c' 'b'

How can I make string inspect to quote strings with ' instead of "?

Solution 
  • s = 'a"c'.inspect
s[0] = s[-1] = "'"
puts s.gsub("\\\"", "\"") #=> 'a"c'