How to escape all markdown characters with a backslash?

Question

I want to escape all markdown characters with a backslash \\ .

I've tried

"testing _the thing".gsub /(\*|_|`)/, '\\\1'

And the result is:

testing \\_the thing

With only 2 \\\\

"testing _the thing".gsub /(\*|_|`)/, '\\1'
 => "testing _the thing"

The output I would like is:

 => "testing \_the thing"

I've tried many things without luck.

Answer 1

You're getting the right output. In inspect mode you'll see this:

"\\_"

That means " literal -backslash underscore". Remember that inside double-quoted strings the backslash is used for special characters and sequences like \\t for tab or \\n for newline. A backslash must be escaped if you want an actual backslash.

Try this:

puts "\\_"

You'll see just \\_ like you want.

If you do this:

"\_"

That's " literal -underscore", which of course is just an underscore. The backslash ends up disappearing since it's redundant.