I have this string:
str = "no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\""
=> "no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\""
I want to remove the escaped double quoted string character \". I use gsub:
result = str.gsub('\\"','')
=> "no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\""
It appears that the string has not substituted the double quote escape characters in the string.
Why am I trying to do this? I have this csv file:
no,"contact_last_name","token",company,urbanization,sec-"property_address","property_address",city-state-zip,ase,oel,presorttrayid,presortdate,imbno,encodedimbno,fca,"property_city","property_state","property_zip"
1,MARIE A JEANTY,1083123,,,,17 SW 6TH AVE,DANIA BEACH FL 33004-3260,Electronic Service Requested,,T00215,12/14/2016,00-314-901373799-105112-33004-3260-17,TATTTADTATTDDDTTFDDFATFTDDDTTFADTTDFAAADDATDAATTFDTDFTTAFFTTATFFF,017,DANIA BEACH,FL, 33004-3260
When I try to open it with CSV, I get the following error:
CSV.foreach(path, headers: true) do |row|
end
CSV::MalformedCSVError: Illegal quoting in line 1.
Once I removed those double quoted strings in the first row (the header), the error went away. So I am trying to remove those double quoted strings before I run it through CSV:
file = File.open "file.csv"
contents = file.read
"no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\" ... "
contents.gsub!('\\"','')
So again my question is why is gsub not removing the specified characters? Note that this actuall does work:
contents.gsub /"/, ""
as if the string is ignoring the \ character.
There is no escaped double quote in this string:
"no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\""
The interpreter recognizes the text above as a string because it is enclosed in double quotes. And because of the same reason, the double quotes embedded in the string must be escaped; otherwise they signal the end of the string.
The enclosing double quote characters are part of the language, not part of the string. The use of backslash (\) as an escape character is also the language's way to put inside a string characters that otherwise have special meaning (double quotes f.e.).
The actual string stored in the str variable is:
no,"contact_last_name","token"
You can check this for yourself if you tell the interpreter to put the string on screen (puts str).
To answer the issue from the question's title, all your efforts to substitute escaped characters string were in vain just because the string doesn't contain the character sequences you tried to find and replace.
And the actual problem is that the CSV file is malformed. The 6th value on the first row (sec-"property_address") doesn't follow the format of a correctly encoded CSV file.
It should read either sec-property_address or "sec-property_address"; i.e. the value should be either not enclosed in quotes at all or completely enclosed in quotes. Having it partially enclosed in quotes confuses the Ruby's CSV parser.
The string looks fine; You're not understanding what you're seeing. Meditate on this:
"no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\"" # => "no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\""
'no,"contact_last_name","token"' # => "no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\""
%q[no,"contact_last_name","token"] # => "no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\""
%Q#no,"contact_last_name","token"# # => "no,\"contact_last_name\",\"token\""
When looking at a string that is delimited by double-quotes, it's necessary to escape certain characters, such as embedded double-quotes. Ruby, along with many other languages, has multiple ways of defining a string to remove that need.
I want to print a long VBScript program into a file as one string.
program_str = " long 200 line program"
However, placing quotation marks around so long a string does not work, as it stops recognizing the program as a string as soon as it hits another set of quotation marks. Short of separating each line of the program, and concatenating it, how could I take this long program as a string and paste it into a file?
Two options:
Double any quotes in your string literal:
program_str = "This program has a quote like this "" in it."
Use Chr(34) to specify a quote in your string literal (requires concatenating):
program_str = "This program has a quote like this " & Chr(34) & " in it."
If you want to include speech marks in a string, you must precede each of them with another quotation mark "
e.g.
program_str = "He said ""Hello"""
How do I remove \" from a string?
Example:
'"\"asdasd"\"'.gsub('\"', '') # => "\"asdasd\""
Why is \" not removed?
It is removed. The \" in the output is not a backslash followed by a double quote, it's just a double quote character that's escaped because inspect prints strings in double quotes. If you try to print the string, it'll come out as:
"asdasd"
To expand on this a bit: '"\"asdasd"\"' (which can also be written using double quotes as "\"\\\"asdasd\"\\\"") is a string that contains a double quote, followed by a backslash, followed by a double quote, followed by asdasd, followed by a double quote, followed by a backslash, followed by a double quote.
Your call to gsub removes the two occurrences of backslashes followed by double quotes. The result is "\"asdasd\"", which could also be written as '"asdasd"' and is a string containing a double quote, followed by asdasd, followed by a double quote. So the backslash-double quotes were removed, but the simple double quotes weren't. I assume that's the intended behavior.
In ruby special symbol is preceding by backslash when convert into string.
i.e "\" to the \"\\\"
Check this you will understand
'"\"asdasd"\"' # => "\"\\\"asdasd\"\\\""
'"\"asdasd"\"'.gsub("\\", '') # => "\"\"asdasd\"\""
'"\"asdasd"\"'.gsub("\\", '').gsub("\"", '') # => "asdasd"
How is this ?
str = '"\"asdasd"\"'
p str[/\w+/] # => "asdasd"
It did remove them. Here's what the string looks like when inspected before the change:
'"\"asdasd"\"' # => "\"\\\"asdasd\"\\\""
And here's after:
'"\"asdasd"\"'.gsub('\"','') # => "\"asdasd\""
So it previously had some backslash-quotation mark sequences in it. Now it just has quotation marks.
I am using FastCSV.
WHen I do this:
title = "\"" + some_title + "\""
My file looks like:
"""some title """, 23, 22
I want:
"some title", 23,22
My guess would be that fastercsv is adding the extra quotes to escape the quotes in your input string.
So if you're input string is [Hello, CSV], faster csv would have to enclose it within double quotes so that csv parsing isn't disrupted by the comma. Ditto for double quotes which have significance in CSV.
I'd say try sending string without the quotes, let fastercsv decide when it needs the double quotes OR use single quotes like Jacob suggests.
I am trying to construct a regex to find a string in ruby
str = "foo"
I want to be able to stop trying to find the string after it finds the closing quotation mark. I also want to keep the quotation marks so I can output the string I found as:
puts "the string is:" + str
=> the string is: "foo"
I am pretty new to using regular expressions.
Here is a start:
/".*?"/
Explanation:
" Match a literal double quote.
.*? Match any characters, as few as possible (non-greedy)
" Match a second literal double quote.
Rubular
Note that this won't work if the string contains escaped quotes or is quoted with single quotes.