 <p>Your issue is not with <code>Array</code>, your question really involves escape sequences for special characters in strings. As the <code>\</code> character is special, you need to first prepend it (escape it) with a leading backslash, like so.</p> <pre><code>"\\" </code></pre> <p>You should also re-read your link and the <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ruby_Programming/Strings#Escape_sequences" rel="nofollow">section on escape sequences</a>.</p>