String#dump and quotes

Ruby
1

Just out of curiosity, why are double quotes added to the start and end
of the string when doing String#dump? I can see where it’s happening
in string.c, but I don’t understand the purpose.

Thanks,

Dan

2

Daniel B. wrote:

Just out of curiosity, why are double quotes added to the start and end
of the string when doing String#dump? I can see where it’s happening
in string.c, but I don’t understand the purpose.

I think it’s just for looks, to emphasize that it’s a string.
Like String#inspect.

FWIW, I think if you eval a dump, you get the original string back.
I think that’s correct. But it may be just a side effect.

Hal

3

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On 2005.12.17 15:37, “Daniel B.” [email protected] wrote:

Just out of curiosity, why are double quotes added to the start and end
of the string when doing String#dump? I can see where it’s happening
in string.c, but I don’t understand the purpose.

I venture as my guess that it is merely intended to allow
storing an ‘internal’ representation of the String. It looks
like all special characters are escaped. This might be useful
for, say, #eval or debugging maybe?

‘foo’.dump # => “"foo"”
“\nf”.dump # => “"\nf"”

Thanks,

Dan

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4

Ross B. wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 06:42:18 -0000, Hal F.
[email protected] wrote:

FWIW, I think if you eval a dump, you get the original string back.
I think that’s correct. But it may be just a side effect.

I assumed that was the point of the quotes and the escaping it does ?

It may well be. I’ve just never seen that documented.

I’ve rarely used dump anyway.

Hal

5

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 06:42:18 -0000, Hal F.
[email protected]
wrote:

I assumed that was the point of the quotes and the escaping it does ?