Ruby's string is very similar to Perl's. Single quote for literal, double quote to eval embedded variable or code.
Use single quote to quote string exactly. (literal string)
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- # ruby aa = 'tiger' # use single quote for string exactly as is p aa # prints 「"tiger"」 # single quoted string containing newline or tab will be printed as they are cc = 'a b' p cc # prints 2 lines
Use double quote for strings that contain newline escape \n, or include variable values or Ruby code.
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- # ruby mm = "tiger\nsnake" puts mm # prints each word in separate line
You can use \n for newline, and \t for tab, etc.
To evaluate a variable or Ruby code within a string, use #{…}.
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- # ruby # put variable value inside a string aa = 4 bb = "there are #{aa} tigers" p bb # prints “there are 4 tigers” # eval Ruby code inside a string p "there are #{1+2} tigers" # prints “there are 3 tigers”
For long string, you can also use:
%q{‹…›} for uninterpolated string.%Q{‹…›} for interpolated string.This is similar to Perl's q{‹…›} and qq{‹…›}.
For examples of %q{‹…›} and “heredoc”, see: Ruby: Quoting Long String and Heredoc.