Issue #11390 has been updated by D.E. Akers. Permitting such syntax would needlessly complicate the parser for virtually no gain, and potentially break existing code that uses a numerical literal as the alternative of a non-padded ternary expression (`foo?1:2`). Just use `:'1twothree'`. ---------------------------------------- Feature #11390: Allow symbols starting with numbers https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/11390#change-53509 * Author: Sameer Deshmukh * Status: Open * Priority: Normal * Assignee: ---------------------------------------- Currently it is not possible to create a symbol that looks like `:1twothree`. Converting to a string and then symbolizing causes hash lookup problems and proves counter-intuitive. What's also surprising is that ruby allows symbols to start with special characters but not numbers. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/