How do I escape a Unicode string with Ruby?

Question

I need to encode/convert a Unicode string to its escaped form, with backslashes. Anybody know how?

Answer 1

If you have Rails kicking around you can use the JSON encoder for this:

require 'active_support'
x = ActiveSupport::JSON.encode('µ')
# x is now "\u00b5"

The usual non-Rails JSON encoder doesn't "\u"-ify Unicode.