ruby code for modifying outer quotes on strings?

Question

Does anyone know of a Ruby gem (or built-in, or native syntax, for that matter) that operates on the outer quote marks of strings?

I find myself writing methods like

Answer 1

If you do it a lot, you may want to add a method to String:

class String
  def strip_quotes
    gsub(/\A['"]+|['"]+\Z/, "")
  end
end

Then you can just call string.strip_quotes.

Adding quotes is similar:

class String
  def add_quotes
     %Q/"#{strip_quotes}"/ 
  end
end

This is called as string.add_quotes and uses strip_quotes before adding double quotes.

Answer 2

I would use the value = value[1...-1] if value[0] == value[-1] && %w[' "].include?(value[0]). In short, this simple code checks whether first and last char of string are the same and removes them if they are single/double quote. Additionally as many as needed quote types can be added.

%w["adadasd" 'asdasdasd' 'asdasdasd"].each do |value|
  puts 'Original value: ' + value
  value = value[1...-1] if value[0] == value[-1] && %w[' "].include?(value[0])
  puts 'Processed value: ' + value
end

The example above will print the following:

Original value: "adadasd"
Processed value: adadasd
Original value: 'asdasdasd'
Processed value: asdasdasd
Original value: 'asdasdasd"
Processed value: 'asdasdasd"

Answer 3

This might 'splain how to remove and add them:

str1 = %["We're not in Kansas anymore."]
str2 = %['He said, "Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana."']

puts str1
puts str2

puts

puts str1.sub(/\A['"]/, '').sub(/['"]\z/, '')
puts str2.sub(/\A['"]/, '').sub(/['"]\z/, '')

puts 

str3 = "foo"
str4 = 'bar'

[str1, str2, str3, str4].each do |str|
  puts (str[/\A['"]/] && str[/['"]\z/]) ? str : %Q{"#{str}"}
end

The original two lines:

# >> "We're not in Kansas anymore."
# >> 'He said, "Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana."'

Stripping quotes:

# >> We're not in Kansas anymore.
# >> He said, "Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana."

Adding quotes when needed:

# >> "We're not in Kansas anymore."
# >> 'He said, "Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana."'
# >> "foo"
# >> "bar"