Zed Shaw's Learn Ruby the Hard Way chapter 9 uses triple double quotes:
puts """
There's something going on here.
With the three double-quotes.
We'll be able to type as much as we like.
Even 4 lines if we want, or 5, or 6.
"""
I tried writing the same thing with single double quotes and it seems to work fine. I don't understand the difference between triple and single double quotes. Am I missing something?
I don't know why he uses triple double quotes in his book. They're nothing special, and one double quote works just fine.
This is a little known "feature" of ruby - it simply glues adjacent strings together.
s = "hello " "world" # equivalent to "hello " + "world"
s # => "hello world"
So your example is equivalent to
puts "" + "
There's something going on here.
With the three double-quotes.
We'll be able to type as much as we like.
Even 4 lines if we want, or 5, or 6.
" + ""
More string tricks: http://pivotallabs.com/stupid-ruby-quoting-tricks/