Issue #5352 has been reported by Joey Zhou. ---------------------------------------- Feature #5352: How about using <> to represent Here Document? http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/5352 Author: Joey Zhou Status: Open Priority: Normal Assignee: Category: Target version: "<<" is a frequently used method in text manipulation. Meanwhile, it's also the beginning token of a here-document. Sometimes it may be confusing to newbies. Unlike Perl, in which "<>" is a very very frequently used operator to read lines from a filehandle, in Ruby, "<>" has no meaning. So I think it can be used to represent Here Document, so as to reduce the possibility of misunderstanding method "<<" and here-document token "<<". And In my opinion, <> is more clear than <<, because it looks like kind of brackets. For example, str = <SECT1>.upcase + <SECT2>.downcase aaaaaa SECT1 XXXXXX SECT2 may be clearer than: str = <<SECT1.upcase + <<SECT2.downcase -- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org