Weird backslash substitution in Ruby

Question

I don\'t understand this Ruby code:

>> puts \'\\\\ <- single backslash\'
# \\ <- single backslash

>> puts \'\\\\ <- 2x a, because 2 bac         


        

Answer 1

Clearing up a little confusion on the author's second line of code.

You said:

>> puts '\\ <- 2x a, because 2 backslashes get replaced'.sub(/\\/, 'aa')
# aa <- 2x a, because two backslashes get replaced

2 backslashes aren't getting replaced here. You're replacing 1 escaped backslash with two a's ('aa'). That is, if you used .sub(/\\/, 'a'), you would only see one 'a'

'\\'.sub(/\\/, 'anything') #=> anything