Ruby unescape HTML string

Question

Any idea how I can unescape the following string in Ruby?

C:\inetpub\wwwroot\adminWeb

to

C:\inetpub\wwwroot\adminWeb

or to

C%3A%5Cinetpub%5Cwwwroot%5CadminWeb

Tried with URI.decode with no success.

Answer 1

The CGI library is one option:

require 'cgi'

CGI.unescapeHTML('C:\inetpub\wwwroot\adminWeb')
# => "C:\\inetpub\\wwwroot\\adminWeb"

Answer 2

One more variant is HTMLEntities

HTMLEntities.new.decode "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\adminWeb"             
# => "C:\\inetpub\\wwwroot\\adminWeb"

I prefer to use it because it deals with rare cases aså and — which CGI.unescapeHTML does not

Answer 3

An alternative is using the standard lib's URI module:

require 'uri'
URI.unescape "C%3A%5Cinetpub%5Cwwwroot%5CadminWeb" # => "C:\\inetpub\\wwwroot\\adminWeb"

EDIT This is answer is obsolete. Please check this thread.