I am attempting to create a string using:
puts '["#{follower.screen_name}"]'
I want the output to be
["DailySanJose"]
where DailySanJose is the value of follower.screen_name. However, the current output is
["#{follower.screen_name}"]
Any help greatly appreciated.
Interpolation (#{}) only works in double quoted strings.
Try this:
puts "[\"#{follower.screen_name}\"]"
I'm including the double quotes in the string by escaping them with the \ (backslash) character.
You could use a %Q to not have to worry about escaping quotes
such as
%Q(["#{follower.screen_name}"])
This will escape the quotes for you automatically and do the string interpolation, that way you don't have to worry about it yourself.
If you're trying to make something like JSON output:
require 'json'
test = "DailySanJose"
JSON.dump([ test ])
# => "[\"DailySanJose\"]"
The advantage here is this accounts for strings like The "Test" which requires double quoting. Don't be confused by the \" part, as when you print that it comes out exactly as-is:
puts JSON.dump([ test ])
# => ["DailySanJose"]
There's also a few other simple ways:
[ test ].inspect
# => "[\"DailySanJose\"]"
inspect is not considered reliable, and shouldn't be used for anything besides debugging. Using JSON is much better.
inspect not reliable? It's fundamental to Ruby and when using plain strings it works great. I agree that JSON is a better call if that's the intended goal, as the output is a lot more standardized.
pp depends on a subjective definition of "pretty", so that might not meet the requirements here. JSON's output is extremely consistent and standards based.To round out the options, you could also use a heredoc:
howdy = "hi"
puts <<_
["#{howdy}"]
_
# ["hi"]
You can use puts '["'+follower.screen_name+'"]'
Edit
you can do it this way with double quotes
puts %{["#{follower.screen_name}"]}
putsdoes not create (return) a string. Do you want to create or output a string?