In writing a script that takes strings on the command line I have run into a small problem which I don't see any way around. Here is a very simplified program that just prints out the first command line argument, and using p you can see exactly what is in the string. [example.rb] <code>p $*[0]</code> Now when I send some different (but similar) strings I end up with the same result in the ARGV array: $ ruby example.rb "\a" "\\a" $ ruby example.rb "\\a" "\\a" $ ruby example.rb \\\a "\\a" 1) Is this because I am running in bash and the shell maps the \\ into a single backslash? 2) Is there any way around this in Ruby or from the command line (in bash) so that I can differentiate between these? Thanks, Joseph Pecoraro -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.