On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Jester Mania <jester_b84 / hotmail.com> wrote:
> Basically, the text file contains lines in the following format (where
> \n is not really a newline but the text "\n"):
>
> TextString  [SYMBOL]\nDefinition
>
> I need to replace the text \n with a tab, as I am attempting to separate
> all the "tokens" by tabs. The issue here is that \n happens to be a
> newline character. I tried searching the forums and tried the following
> code:
>
> lineItem = line.gsub("\\\\n", "\t")

This may be useful:

$ irb
>> s = 'car\nplane\ntrain \n boat' # because of ' the \n is not interpreted as newline
=> "car\\nplane\\ntrain \\n boat"
>> s.gsub(/\\n/, "\t") # here the \\n is really '\n' , but "\t" is really <TAB>
=> "car\tplane\ttrain \t boat"
>> # the result has <TAB>s now

Peter