[ruby-core:57572] [ruby-trunk - Feature #7854] New method Symbol[string]

Issue #7854 has been updated by Student (Nathan Zook).


This was set to "next minor" a LONG time ago, but I don't see it in 2.1.  ???  This would aid security in a couple of ways.

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Feature #7854: New method Symbol[string]
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7854#change-42188

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.



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