Ruby String Object Empty or Not?

I have a string that is the output of Ruby on Rails render_to_string

When in the Ruby debugger this is what I get

pp string.inspect # ->  blank
pp string         # ->  blank
pp string.Class   # ->  String
pp string.empty?  # ->  false
pp string.nil?    # ->  false
pp string.blank?  # ->  false
pp string.to_s    # ->  blank

I know there is content in the string because logger.info string returns the string as expected, but I don't know how to get to it.

Any ideas? Thanks!

EDIT: I figured out that this problem is very localized. It only happens when I am using the ruby-debugger. And it happens to any stri开发者_运维问答ng that has a percent symbol in it.

For example, If I made a string

string = 'this is a string with a % symbol'

the string can no longer be inspected, printed, or even unpack.

I am on Ruby 1.8 and Rails 2.3.

I think this may be just part of my lack of understanding about something mundane in Ruby.

Looks like your string is definitely not empty.

Can you download the hexdump extension for class String, and do this:

require 'hexdump'

#... whatever you do in your program

puts string.hexdump

and post the output in your question?

This way we can see what's in the string, even if those are non-printable characters..

See:

http://www.unixgods.org/~tilo/Ruby/hexdump.html