In Ruby 1.9, you can write a hash with symbol keys in two ways:

{ :foo => bar }
{ foo: bar }

Some have expressed discontent at this syntax change. Luckily, it's purely syntax sugar: there's no reason other than preference to use one or the other (assuming you are targeting 1.9). That means we can freely convert between them! That's what hash_syntax does: it scans Ruby code and turns the code into all 1.8 syntax or all 1.9 syntax.

To convert a whole project to 1.8 syntax:

hash_syntax --to-18

To convert a whole project to 1.9 syntax:

hash_syntax --to-19

With no arguments, hash_syntax will scan the following paths using Dir[] and operate on each matching file:

• app/**/*.rb
• ext/**/*.rb
• features/**/*.rb
• lib/**/*.rb
• spec/**/*.rb
• test/**/*.rb

If you wish to convert individual files, you can name them explicitly:

hash_syntax --to-19 lib/foo.rb

That's all there is to it!

hash_syntax uses the object_regex library (source) to perform regex searches on the Ruby token stream of a given file. A Ruby 1.8 symbol hash key which can be converted to 1.9's syntax can be described as:

symbeg (ident | kw) sp? hashrocket

By using each token's unique name, (with one tweak: all other operators are op and the hashrocket is hashrocket), object_regex can search using this pattern and find it in the Ruby source. Conveniently, you cannot have a line break between the symbol and the hashrocket; otherwise, the regex would be a bit more complicated (also needing to consider comments!). Each match is replaced inline as text, and hash_syntax notes how much the line has shrunk, in case further replacements happen on the same line. A better option would be to replace the actual tokens in the stream and reconstruct the source from the token stream.

Ruby 1.9 symbol tokens are just a single label token; they are easy to find in the source.

gem install hash_syntax

• Fork the project.
• Make your feature addition or bug fix.
• Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright (c) 2011 Michael Edgar. See LICENSE for details.