From: "Student (Nathan Zook)" Date: 2013-02-15T10:55:14+09:00 Subject: [ruby-core:52274] [ruby-trunk - Feature #7854] New method Symbol[string] Issue #7854 has been updated by Student (Nathan Zook). It could, but it would be extraordinarily slow, as all_symbols returns an array. ---------------------------------------- Feature #7854: New method Symbol[string] https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7854#change-36302 Author: Student (Nathan Zook) Status: Open Priority: Normal Assignee: Category: core Target version: next minor I propose a new class method [] on Symbol. If a symbol s already exists such that s.to_s == string, then s is returned. If not, nil is returned. The inspiration for this method is a question I was asked, and the answer I was given: "Why would you want to turn a tainted string into a symbol?" "I don't--I want to access an existing symbol with tainted data". Symbol[] accesses the symbol table like hash[] accesses the elements of a hash. I believe that this completely addresses the problems behind tickets #7791 and #7839. I believe that it is a more intuitive solution than my proposal #7795, and I believe that this will also be useful for YAML.safe_load and similar initiatives. -- http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/