From: "nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)" <nobu@...>
Date: 2013-03-07T21:50:11+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:53188] [ruby-trunk - Feature #7854] New method Symbol[string]


Issue #7854 has been updated by nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada).


To obtain existing symbol, rb_check_id() is already available, so you don't have to add new extern function.
----------------------------------------
Feature #7854: New method Symbol[string]
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7854#change-37356

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/