[ruby-core:74898] [Ruby trunk Feature#12272] Accepting HTML entity name in string literal

Issue #12272 has been updated by Robert A. Heiler.


I don't know. I am not really against it, also not really for it but to be honest, I can't remember either of these variants anyway. :)

Would this actually be used/usable? 

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Feature #12272: Accepting HTML entity name in string literal
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12272#change-58024

* Author: Tsuyoshi Sawada
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: 
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String literal allows the escape character `\u` to describe a character using UTF-8 character code like this:

~~~ruby
"\u201c" # left double quote
"\u2191" # up arrow
~~~

This is useful in typing characters that are not easy to input from the keyboard. However, normal people do not memorize the UTF-8 codes by heart.

The HTML symbol entity name is the place where we can compromise (although it is not available for the entire UTF-8), I think. I would like the string literal to be extended to accept HTML entity names and interpret them as the corresponding UTF-8 characters. I do not have a definite idea for the syntax, but a candidate can be an escape character `\& ... ;`, so that we can type:

~~~ruby
"\“" # left double quote
"\↑"  # up arrow
~~~

Currently, `"\&"` is interpreted as `"&"`, so this will be a compatibility breaking change, and if that is not desirable, perhaps a different syntax may be considered.



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