Bug #13589: unmatched opening backtick / closing quote in NoMethodError: undefined method `name' for {}:Hash

• Status: Rejected
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -
• ruby -v: ruby 2.4.1p111 (2017-03-22 revision 58053) [x86_64-darwin16]
• Backport: 2.2: UNKNOWN, 2.3: UNKNOWN, 2.4: UNKNOWN

[domaio (Dorian M)]

From error.c:

/*
 *  Document-class: NoMethodError
 *
 *  Raised when a method is called on a receiver which doesn't have it
 *  defined and also fails to respond with +method_missing+.
 *
 *     "hello".to_ary
 *
 *  <em>raises the exception:</em>
 *
 *     NoMethodError: undefined method `to_ary' for "hello":String
 */

For instance:

>> {}.c
NoMethodError: undefined method `c' for {}:Hash
>> {}.name
NoMethodError: undefined method `name' for {}:Hash

Expected (two tildes):

NoMethodError: undefined method `c` for {}:Hash

Expected (two single quotes):

NoMethodError: undefined method 'c' for {}:Hash

P.S.: I just noticed it's the same for method names, e.g.:

`<main>'
# in
from /Users/d/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.1/bin/irb:11:in `<main>'

Looking at error.c in general, it seems like a rather intentional behavior but I didn't see any explanation of it (and it doesn't look good / make it easy to copy/paste for me, even all those code examples are messed up because of it :) (but not the ones with the fixed syntax ;) ) ).

[domaio (Dorian M)]

• ruby -v set to ruby 2.4.1p111 (2017-03-22 revision 58053) [x86_64-darwin16]

Thought about it when trying to explain Struct vs OpenStruct on Stack Overflow :) https://stackoverflow.com/a/44121818/407213

[shyouhei (Shyouhei Urabe)]

domaio (Dorian M) wrote:

Looking at error.c in general, it seems like a rather intentional

Yes. I bekieve this is how quotation marks in English works. I don't like the idea to change our error messages only because wild Markdown parsers don't interface.

[shyouhei (Shyouhei Urabe)]

• Is duplicate of Bug #12321: Backticks in log output cause issues added

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

• Status changed from Open to Rejected

Error messages are not Markdown.
Use multiline code block to quote them.

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

shyouhei (Shyouhei Urabe) wrote:

domaio (Dorian M) wrote:

Looking at error.c in general, it seems like a rather intentional

Yes. I bekieve this is how quotation marks in English works. I don't like the idea to change our error messages only because wild Markdown parsers don't interface.

Well, to be precise, English quotations use ‘…’ and “…” in high-quality typography. The use of `…' is a fallback convention on some systems. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Typewriters_and_early_computers. The number of characters in ASCII was very limited, so the "`" character had to cover both as the grave accent (used after a base character and a backspace character, or before a backspace and the base character) and as a backquote. On typewriters, the "`" was usually not available, and so simple '…' was used.

[domaio (Dorian M)]

I'm curious what Matz thinks

[mame (Yusuke Endoh)]

• Related to Feature #16495: Inconsistent quotes in error messages added

[hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)]

• Has duplicate Bug #17107: Backtick in backtrace is a little bit annoying added

[byroot (Jean Boussier)]

I think we should consider this again given the current focus on developer ergonomics.