Ruby remove `\"` from a string?

Question

How do I remove \\" from a string?

Example:

'"\"asdasd"\"'.gsub('\"', '') # => "\"asdasd\""

Why is \\" not removed?

Answer 1

It is removed. The \\" in the output is not a backslash followed by a double quote, it's just a double quote character that's escaped because inspect prints strings in double quotes. If you try to print the string, it'll come out as:

"asdasd"

To expand on this a bit: '"\\"asdasd"\\"' (which can also be written using double quotes as "\\"\\\\\\"asdasd\\"\\\\\\"" ) is a string that contains a double quote, followed by a backslash, followed by a double quote, followed by asdasd, followed by a double quote, followed by a backslash, followed by a double quote.

Your call to gsub removes the two occurrences of backslashes followed by double quotes. The result is "\\"asdasd\\"" , which could also be written as '"asdasd"' and is a string containing a double quote, followed by asdasd, followed by a double quote. So the backslash-double quotes were removed, but the simple double quotes weren't. I assume that's the intended behavior.

Answer 2

In ruby special symbol is preceding by backslash when convert into string. ie "\\" to the \\"\\\\\\"

Check this you will understand

'"\"asdasd"\"'                               # => "\"\\\"asdasd\"\\\""
'"\"asdasd"\"'.gsub("\\", '')                # => "\"\"asdasd\"\""
'"\"asdasd"\"'.gsub("\\", '').gsub("\"", '') # => "asdasd"

Answer 3

How is this ?

str = '"\"asdasd"\"'
p str[/\w+/] # => "asdasd"

Answer 4

It did remove them. Here's what the string looks like when inspect ed before the change:

'"\"asdasd"\"'               # => "\"\\\"asdasd\"\\\""

And here's after:

'"\"asdasd"\"'.gsub('\"','') # => "\"asdasd\""

So it previously had some backslash-quotation mark sequences in it. Now it just has quotation marks.