This is a tip for fellow C# developers out there learning Rails. Astute C# developers will know that we can put an @ character before a quoted string to turn off backslash interpretation:

// C# code
"This message will span \n two lines" 
@"This message \n is on one line" 

In the second case, the \n is not interpreted as a newline.

In Ruby, you use single-quoted strings to perform the equivalent of the @ sign (well, almost):

// Ruby code
"This message will span \n two lines" 
'This message \n is still on one line'

Notice the second message is in single quotes, not double quotes.

There are two exceptions to this rule, because there are two times when we want a backslash to be a special character in a single-quoted string. First, if a backslash is followed immediately by a single quote, then the single quote is considered part of the string and not as the closing quote.

Secondly, and somewhat confusingly, two backslashes in a row result in one backslash in the string. In other words, it’s not required that you put two backslashes to get one slash, but you can if you need to. When do you need to? When you want the last character in your string to be a backslash:

// Ruby code
'This message ends in a backslash\\'
'But this message causes an interpreter error\'

You need to double the slash at the end, otherwise Ruby thinks you’re trying to escape the closing quote.

As a bonus tip, you can choose any character you want to be your string encloser if you don’t want to use single quotes. Use the %q syntax instead. The first character after the %q is taken to be your delimiter:

// Ruby code
%qJThis message ends in a backslash\\J
%q:This message \n is on one line and uses the colon as my delimter:

Did I get something wrong, or does anyone out there have any other insights about Ruby strings? Let me know.