William James wrote: > You said that you wanted to count all dollar signs except the > escaped ones. So the correct answer is 2. The first backslash > escapes the second one, which escapes nothing. Yes, thanks, I realize now. 1 was the answer I would have wanted because it wasn't preceded by a space, but I could have made that much clearer in my question. Thanks a lot guys. You've been most helpful. Have loads more basic questions like that. Is this the right forum for such questions? -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.