What is the origin of the notation "% i"?

Question

Ruby classically supports the following literals:

%q[quack quack] #=> "quack quack" %r[quack quack] #=> /quack quack/ %w[quack quack] #=> ["quack", "quack"] %x[echo quack quack] #=> "quack quack\n" 

My understanding of the origin of this data is as follows:

• %q[] for q uotes
• %r[] for r egex
• %w[] for w ords
• %x[] for e x ecute

Ruby 2.0 introduced the notation %i :

 %i[quack quack] #=> [:quack, :quack] 

Why i ?

Answer 1

This is probably a reference to the String#intern method used to get a character from a string.

 "foo".intern #=> :foo