[ruby-core:108934] [Ruby master Feature#16495] Inconsistent quotes in error messages

["austin (Austin Ziegler)" <noreply@ruby-lang.org>]

Issue #16495 has been updated by austin (Austin Ziegler).


zverok (Victor Shepelev) wrote in #note-21:
> I wonder what is the **necessity** to preserve this legacy convention of ``assimetric `quotes'``?.. Just because it is already this way?.. (If you ask me, it irked me always as also looking weird in the terminal, but maybe it is something personal)

It’s not personal, it‘s based on the fact that the terminal emulators we have been using for a very long time have not supported the exact same fonts as the terminals did, even back in 1989 when I got access. Right now, `'` is usually displayed as a vertical quarter bar from the top, but it was displayed on most VT series terminals the same as `’` (raised comma). `` ` `` wasn’t shown as a bare grave accent, but was shown as a raised reversed comma, or `‛`.

Like you, I did not know the double backtick trick, even though I’ve been using Markdown since *very* early (and you need spaces for `` ` `` to work, per the Common Mark spec https://spec.commonmark.org/0.30/#code-spans).

Many editors expect GNU-style quoting, so changing the formatting for Ruby would have substantial downstream impact (https://cs.github.com/gcc-mirror/gcc?q=%2F%60%25s%27%2F).

There’s strong opinions (https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/17695/any-reference-on-the-usage-of-a-backtick-and-single-quotation-mark-like-this/) about whether it’s good or bad practice, and I’d love to see it change entirely, but that may be asking a bit much from an entire computer industry.

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Feature #16495: Inconsistent quotes in error messages
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/16495#change-98018

* Author: Kolano (Kenneth Kolano)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
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Error messages use inconsistent pairs of quotes, for instance:

```
-e:1:in `<main>': undefined local variable or method `foo' for main:Object (NameError)
```

where a back tick is used on the left-hand side, and a single quote is used on the right.

The same quotes should be used on either side of the elements being quoted.



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