Question

In Matt’s post about drying up cucumber tests, Aslak suggests the following.

When I have lots of quotes, I prefer this:

Given %{I enter “#{User.first.username}” in “username”}

What is the %{CONTENT} construct called? Will someone mind referencing it in some documentation? I’m not sure how to go about looking it up.

There’s also the stuff about %Q. Is that equivalent to just %? What of the curly braces? Can you use square braces? Do they function differently?

Finally, what is the #{<ruby stuff to be evaluated>} construct called? Is there a reference to that in documentation somewhere, too?

Answer 1

1. “Percent literals” is usually a good way to google some information:

   • http://www.sampierson.com/articles/ruby-percent-literals
   • http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ruby_Programming/Syntax/Literals#The_.25_Notation

2. #{} is called “string interpolation”.