JuliaLang/julia — pull request #1459 by toivoh (2012-10-27 12:11:16+00:00)
Title: RFC: Show symbols with a colon

Currently, symbols show without a colon:

julia> :x
x

This patch changes it to

julia> :x
:x

`print` still produces the raw name when you need it, and thus `string` does as well.

I think this change would improve clarity. I put an RFC in the title because I wasn't sure if there's a reason that this hasn't been implemented already. Thoughts?

Btw, I built this patch on top of #1458, since I thought that one would be less controversial. If there's interest for a patch only changes `show` for symbols, I could fix that easily.