Guidelines for the "symbol" syntax class

[Dmitry Gutov]

Hi all and Stefan,

I intend to make some changes to the syntax of `:' in ruby-mode, and I'm 
wondering how far should that change go. I can remove it from the syntax 
table, but still apply it via syntax-propertize-function in other cases, 
see below.

Do we have any solid guidelines for that?

Context: my two main uses of the notion of symbol are 1) "all symbols in 
all buffer" completion candidates, 2) filtering the results of 
xref-find-references by checking that the match begins and ends at a 
symbol boundary. Currently, both of these features don't work well in 
ruby-mode.

First, "M::C" is interpreted as one symbol. If I just search for 
references to "C", this won't match. And vice versa, this qualified name 
usually corresponds to the definition like this:

module M
  class C
  end
end

so if I search for references to "M::C", this won't match either. So `:' 
should simply become "punctuation". Then the simplest approach will 
leave to false positives, but no false negatives.

There is another way `:' is used in Ruby: Ruby Symbols (I'm going to 
mention those only using a capital S, to distinguish). Which is like 
weird syntax for interned strings, but they're often used to refer to 
method names: for introspection, or when defining a method dynamically, 
or to dispatch a call dynamically. Examples:

class C
  def foo
  end
end

C.instance_method(:foo) # => #<UnboundMethod: C#foo>

class C
  define_method(:foo) do
    3
  end
end

C.new.send(:foo) # => 3

Consequently, if somewhere in my Ruby program there's a method foo_bar, 
it might be beneficial to be able to complete a Symbol :fo to :foo_bar 
as well, or for xref-find-references, when looking for references to 
this method, include the usages of Symbol :foo_bar.

Or take this example:

class C
  # attr_reader is a macro, kinda.
  # Define a method C#foo that simply returns the value
  # of the instance variable with the same name:
  attr_reader :foo

  def initialize(foo)
    # Assign that instance variable.
    @foo = foo
  end

  def do_something
    # Call the previously defined method (parens are optional)
    # and then call a method on the returned value:
    foo.do_something_amazing
  end
end

After writing the attr_reader call, it would be handy if I could use the 
name of the symbol in completion when writing the name of the argument, 
and the name of the variable (so there's also a question of whether @ 
should have the "symbol" syntax; it currently doesn't). And then later, 
when calling the method.

Another argument in favor of not having `:' be symbol constituents in 
Symbol literals is that we have two ways to write Hash (associative 
array) literal with Symbol keys:

{:key => value} and {key: value},

where the latter is syntactic sugar for the former. If `:' is not a 
symbol constituents, we won't have two superficially "different" symbols 
in the buffer, and the "find references" search will easily find both.

Or, should I stop trying to make the simplest general approaches work in 
ruby-mode, and write a dedicated xref backend for Ruby? One that would 
use etags and Grep, but use a bit smarter filtering.

What should company-dabbrev-code do? Should it use 
dabbrev-abbrev-char-regexp, which ruby-mode will then set?

Should both company-dabbrev-code and ruby-mode make use of 
dabbrev-abbrev-skip-leading-regexp? Note that it still won't help to 
avoid making {:key and {key: look like different symbols.

And if I do all that, what *will* be the purpose of making `:' remain 
symbol constituents inside Symbol literals?

Thanks all,
especially to those who've read all this ;-)