From: "phluid61 (Matthew Kerwin)" Date: 2013-03-07T12:50:50+09:00 Subject: [ruby-core:53181] [ruby-trunk - Feature #7854] New method Symbol[string] Issue #7854 has been updated by phluid61 (Matthew Kerwin). File symbol_lookup.patch added =begin I've attached a patch that defines ((%Symbol[str]%)). If ((|str|)) is a string and there exists a symbol such that (({symbol.to_s == str})), it returns that symbol. Otherwise it returns ((|nil|)). Raises a TypeError if ((|str|)) is not a string. I also made a unit test, currently available as a gist: https://gist.github.com/phluid61/5105458 =end ---------------------------------------- Feature #7854: New method Symbol[string] https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7854#change-37348 Author: Student (Nathan Zook) Status: Open Priority: Normal Assignee: matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) 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/