Hi --

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Paul Rubel wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to take a string and escape a single quote if it is not
> already escaped. My first thought was to look at the string and if I
> see a quote without a backslash before it put the backslash there.
> 
> This has a problem when there is an escaped slash before the quote:
> \\'. I believe the fix should be to look two characters back. If
> anyone has a canned solution I'm all ears. Would look-behind be an
> option here out of the box?

I admit I get confused by escaping and stuff... but I can't quite
picture the case you're describing.  If a string contains a single
quote:

  "abc'def"

that's the same as:

  "abc\'def"

So I don't think you'll actually see that backslash before the single
quote when you scan the string.  

If you do see a slash -- i.e., if the string is:

  abc\'def

then that would probably be generated with "abc\\'def", which would be
equivalent to:

  "abc\\\'def"

I'm afraid I didn't quite follow the Summer's Day example.  Can you
give another?


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack / wobblini.net