Alex Young
5/10/2007 12:49:00 AM
rgossen wrote:
> On May 9, 12:22 am, Greg <e...@linkLINE.com> wrote:
>> On 2007-05-08 18:47:50 -0700, Rob Biedenharn <R...@AgileConsultingLLC.com> said:
>>
>>
>>
>>> On May 8, 2007, at 9:10 PM, Greg wrote:
>>>> def pick_an_orange numToPick
>>>> puts 'Got to pick_an_orange, now trying to get it working.
>>>> numToPick: #{numToPick}' # debugging
>>> Did you mean to have puts "Got ... #{numToPick}" in "double-quotes" to
>>> interpolate the #{numToPick}. In single quotes, you'll get literally:
>>> Got to pick_an_orange, now trying to get it working. numToPick: # {numToPick}
>>> Does that help you?
>>> -Rob
>> Thanks, I missed that I had single quotes. I think I'm learning that
>> double quotes are safer. For some reason Pine uses single quotes. I
>> mainly need to get used to reading Ruby so I can see errors.
>> Practice...
>
> I'm a newb as well so take this for what it's worth.
>
> My understanding is that the Ruby interpreter handles single quotes
> faster than double quotes, so you should use single quotes if doubles
> aren't necessary. I don't know how appreciable the speed difference
> is, or if that difference is worth potentially causing the kind of
> problem that you encountered.
Measure it (that's what the Benchmark library is for). You'll be surprised.
To cut a long story short, the only difference between single- and
double-quoted strings is in the parsing. In practice, you won't notice
a difference. The most important practical use for single-quotes over
double-quotes (at least in my book) is to signal to the developer
whether there should be anything interesting inside the string, rather
than any performance considerations.
--
Alex