Should Style/StringLiterals also apply to quoted symbols?

[sambostock]

• Style/StringLiterals provides the ability to enforce a consistent quoting style ("..." vs '...'), with rich support for edge cases.
• Lint/SymbolConversion provides the ability to enforce consistent symbol literal syntax (again with rich support for edge cases), and respects the style specified by Style/StringLiterals when autocorrecting by inserting quotes.

However, when using quoted symbol literals, there does not appear to be a way to enforce a consistent quote style. It seems logical that Style/StringLiterals should extend its enforcement to Symbol literals as well.

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Expected behavior

• Style/StringLiterals enforced style should apply to Symbol literals, or
• there should be another way to enforce quotation style for quoted symbols.

Actual behavior

• Style/StringLiterals enforced style does not apply to Symbol literals, and
• there is no other way (AFAIK) to enforce quotation style for quoted symbols.

Steps to reproduce the problem

Setup

# .rubocop.yml
AllCops:
  DisabledByDefault: true
Style/StringLiterals:
  Enabled: true

# example.rb
puts  "abc-def" # Offensive, as expected
puts :"abc-def" # Inoffensive, but should be

Output

$ rubocop example.rb
Inspecting 1 file
C

Offenses:

example.rb:2:6: C: [Correctable] Style/StringLiterals: Prefer single-quoted strings when you don't need string interpolation or special symbols.
puts "abc-def"  # Offensive
     ^^^^^^^^^

1 file inspected, 1 offense detected, 1 offense auto-correctable

RuboCop version

$ bundle exec rubocop -V
1.14.0 (using Parser 3.0.1.1, rubocop-ast 1.5.0, running on ruby 2.7.1 x86_64-darwin19)

[tejasbubane]

I think we should add a new boolean config option EnforceForSymbolConversion which if true will apply EnforcedStyle for symbol conversions. This config should be set to false by default to avoid breaking changes.

[bbatsov]

@tejasbubane Add this option where? I assume you're referrring to StringLiterals, but I don't like the idea of piling too much on individual cops. If there's a need for consistent quoting in symbol literals this should be a dedicated cop IMO.