Not sure if anything I posted is helpful today. Mind numb from driving in the rain all day.
To be candid, I used to write a lot of PHP code, and I rarely (perhaps never) use the \ operator to continue a line in PHP (as you are doing) because of problems it used to cause (me).
So, I better go to sleep since I am sure I am not being helpful today and will surely start to confuse Ruby and PHP syntax soon (if not already)!