Question

Trying to convert output from a rest_client GET to the characters that are represented with escape sequences.

Input: ..."sub_id":"\u0d9c\u8138\u8134\u3f30\u8139\u2b71"...

(which I put in ‘all_subs’)

Match: m = /sub_id\"\:\"([^\"]+)\"/.match(all_subs.to_str) [1]

Print: puts m.force_encoding("UTF-8").unpack('U*').pack('U*')

But it just comes out the same way I put it in. ie, “\u0d9c\u8138\u8134\u3f30\u8139\u2b71”

However, if I convert a raw string of it:

puts "\u0d9c\u8138\u8134\u3f30\u8139\u2b71".unpack('U*').pack('U*')

The output is perfect as “ග脸脴㼰脹⭱”

Answer 1

What you’re getting when you parse the input string is actually this:

m = "\\u0d9c\\u8138\\u8134\\u3f30\\u8139\\u2b71"

Which is not the same as:

"\u0d9c\u8138\u8134\u3f30\u8139\u2b71"

Therefore one option is to eval the string so that ruby applies the codepoints:

puts eval("\"#{m}\"")
=> ග脸脴㼰脹

However note that there are security implications when running eval.

If the string is always like in your example. You could also do something like this, which is safe:

puts m.split("\\u")[1..-1].map { |c| c.to_i(16) }.pack("U*")
=> ග脸脴㼰脹