Question

irb(main):001:0> t = %w{this is a test}
=> ["this", "is", "a", "test"]
irb(main):002:0> t.size
=> 4
irb(main):003:0> t = %w{"this is" a test}
=> ["\"this", "is\"", "a", "test"]
irb(main):004:0> t.size
=> 4

In the end I expected t.size to be 3.

As suggested, each space has to be escaped …which turns out to be a lot of work. What other options are there? I have a list of about 30 words that I need to put in a collection because I am showing them as checkboxes using simple_form

Answer 1

Why not just use a normal array so no one has to visually parse all the escaping to figure out what’s going on? This is pretty clear:

t = [
    'this is',
    'a',
    'test'
]

and the people maintaining your code won’t hate you for using %w{} when it isn’t appropriate or when they mess things up because they didn’t see your escaped whitespace.