escaping a string in Ruby

Question

I want to insert the following as the value for a variable in some Ruby:

`~!@#$%^&*()_-+={}|[]\\:\";\'<>?,./

Surrounding this in doub

Answer 1

First, unless I'm crazy %q() does work here, perfectly well, since the inner parentheses are balanced:

>> weird = %q(`~!@#$%^&*()_-+={}|[]\:";'<>?,./)
=> "`~!@\#$%^&*()_-+={}|[]\\:";'<>?,./"
>> puts weird
`~!@#$%^&*()_-+={}|[]\:";'<>?,./

As a side note: when using %q, you always have the nuclear option of using spaces as the delimiter. This is foul and officially a Bad Idea, but it works.

Again, I wouldn't do it, but just to see...

>> weird = %q `~!@#$%^&*()_-+={}|[]\:";'<>?,./ 
=> "`~!@\#$%^&*()_-+={}|[]\\:";'<>?,./"