What is the %w “thing” in ruby?

Question

I\'m referring to the %w operator/constructor/whatever you may call it, used like this:

%w{ foo bar baz }
=> [\"foo\", \"bar\", \"baz\"]

Answer 1

There are various forms of literal syntax you can use, with pretty much any paired delimiter, see http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/html/language.html:

%w[one two three] # == ["one", "two", "three"]

%[one two three] # == "one two three"
%[one "two" three] # == "one \"two\" three"

%r[one two three] # == /one two three/