escaping a string in Ruby

Question

I want to insert the following as the value for a variable in some Ruby:

`~!@#$%^&*()_-+={}|[]\\:\";\'<>?,./

Surrounding this in doub

Answer 1

The first thing I'd normally think of would be a %q directive -- but since you seem to be using all the punctuation you'd normally use to delimit one, I can't think of an easy way to make it work here.

The second thing I'd think of would be a heredoc:

mystring = <?,./
END

That breaks after the backslash, though.

So my third answer, clunky but the best thing I can think of with just two minutes' thought, would be to substitute something harmless for the "problem" characters and then substitute it after the assignment:

mystring = '`~!@#$%^&*()_-+={}|[]\:"; <>?,./'.tr(" ","'")

I don't like it, but it works.