Which style of Ruby string quoting do you favour?

Question

Which style of Ruby string quoting do you favour? Up until now I\'ve always used \'single quotes\' unless the string contains certain escape sequences or interp

Answer 1

I used to use single quotes until I knew I needed interpolation. Then I found that I was wasting a lot of time when I'd go back and have to change some single-quotes to double-quotes. Performance testing showed no measurable speed impact of using double-quotes, so I advocate always using double-quotes.

The only exception is when using sub/gsub with back-references in the replacement string. Then you should use single quotes, since it's simpler.

mystring.gsub( /(fo+)bar/, '\1baz' )
mystring.gsub( /(fo+)bar/, "\\1baz" )