[ruby-core:108831] [Ruby master Feature#18822] Ruby lack a proper method to percent-encode strings for URIs (RFC 3986)

Issue #18822 has been updated by byroot (Jean Boussier).


Proposed implementation: https://github.com/ruby/cgi/pull/26

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Feature #18822: Ruby lack a proper method to percent-encode strings for URIs (RFC 3986)
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18822#change-97907

* Author: byroot (Jean Boussier)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
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### Context

There are two fairly similar encoding methods that are often confused. 

`application/x-www-form-urlencoded` which is how form data is encoded, and "percent-encoding" as defined by [RFC 3986](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986).

AFAIK, the only way they differ is that "form encoding" escape space characters as `+`, and RFC 3986 escape them as `%20`. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but sometimes it does.

### Ruby form and URL escape methods

  - `URI.escape(" ") # => "%20"` but it was deprecated and removed (in 3.0 ?).
  - `ERB::Util.url_encode(" ") # => "%20"` but it's implemented with a `gsub` and isn't very performant. It's also awkward to have to reach for `ERB`
  - `CGI.escape(" ") # => "+"`
  - `URI.encode_www_form_component(" ") # => "+"`

### Unescape methods

For unescaping, it's even more of a clear cut since `URI.unescape` was removed. So there's no available method that won't treat an unescaped `+` as simply `+`.

e.g. in Javascript: `decodeURIComponent("foo+bar") #=> "foo+bar"`.

If one were to use `CGI.unescape`, the string might be improperly decoded: `GI.unescape("foo+bar") #=> "foo bar"`. 

### Other languages

  - Javascript `encodeURI` and `encodeURIComponent` use `%20`.
  - PHP has `urlencode` using `+` and `rawurlencode` using `%20`.
  - Python has `urllib.parse.quote` using `%20` and `urllib.parse.quote_plus` using `+`.

### Proposal

Since `CGI` already have a very performant encoder for `application/x-www-form-urlencoded`, I think it would make sense that it would provide another method for RFC3986.

I propose:

   - `CGI.url_encode(" ") # => "%20"`
   - Or `CGI.encode_url`.
   - Alias `CGI.escape` as `GCI.encode_www_form_component`
   - Clarify the documentation of `CGI.escape`.





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