title: Why is a double-backslash escape required inside single-quoted strings?
body: <p>Just curious what's behind the decision of the Ruby developers to interpret the double-backslash escape sequence inside single quotes. I can understand why an escaped single-quote has to be interpreted because insertion of single-quote character won't be possible. For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>'\'' == "'"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But consider <code>'\\' == "\\"</code>. Why is this another special case?</p>