Issue #20433 has been updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze). I think always having spaces would help readability. If we don't want to change that, then how about simply quoting these symbols that need it? ---------------------------------------- Bug #20433: Hash.inspect for some hash returns syntax invalid representation https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/20433#change-108203 * Author: tompng (tomoya ishida) * Status: Open * Backport: 3.0: UNKNOWN, 3.1: UNKNOWN, 3.2: UNKNOWN, 3.3: UNKNOWN ---------------------------------------- For these hashes, Hash.inspect returns a syntax invalid representation: ~~~ruby { :a! => 1 } # {:a!=>1} { :a? => 1 } # {:a?=>1} { :* => 1 } # {:*=>1} { :== => 1 } # {:===>1} { :< => 1 } # {:<=>1} ~~~ `eval(hash.inspect)` will raise SyntaxError. Although inspect does not guarantee that the result can be eval-ed, it'd be confusing for these few cases. Maybe related to https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/20235 -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/