Reconsider Style/StringLiterals: standard's double-quotes-always default

[ineedjet]

Summary

config/rubocop.yml inherits standard's base config (rubocop/standard.yml) and doesn't override Style/StringLiterals in config/rubocop/baseline.yml. standard's default for that cop is EnforcedStyle: double_quotes — every string literal must use double quotes, even when nothing in the string needs interpolation or an escape sequence.

Why raise it

Worth discussing whether that's the right default for this shared config, or whether it should be overridden the way other standard defaults already are in config/rubocop/baseline.yml (see LINTERS-DEFAULTS-OVERRIDES.md for the existing precedent of documented deviations from upstream standard/RuboCop defaults).

The usual argument for single-quotes-by-default (traditional community Ruby style, pre-standard): a plain string with no interpolation/escapes needs no double-quote machinery, and reserving double quotes for when you actually need interpolation or escape sequences makes intent visible at the call site ("#{name}" vs 'literal').

Not proposing a specific resolution here — just flagging it as worth a deliberate decision (keep standard's double-quotes-always, or override to single-quotes-preferred) rather than an inherited default nobody explicitly chose.

Reference

• config/rubocop.yml (inherits rubocop/standard.yml)
• config/rubocop/baseline.yml (where an override would go, following the existing pattern)
• LINTERS-DEFAULTS-OVERRIDES.md (where the rationale would get documented, per existing convention)

[ineedjet]

One more data point: yamllint's config here (config/yamllint.yml) doesn't enable the quoted-strings rule at all, so YAML in this repo (and everywhere baseline's yamllint hook runs) is free to use single quotes — and in practice that's the convention (e.g. '0 */2 * * *', 'Status').

Baseline's whole premise is a shared config surface meant to harmonize code and code style across languages (yamllint/pymarkdown/ruff/shellcheck/actionlint/rubocop/erb-lint under one config repo). If that's the goal, it's worth deciding on purpose whether "prefer single quotes, double only when interpolation/escapes are needed" should be the cross-language default — currently Ruby is the outlier forcing double-only via inherited standard default, while YAML (and Python via ruff, which defaults to double but is at least consistent with itself) isn't pinned either way.

[ineedjet]

Correction to my last comment: I claimed ruff defaults to double quotes here — checked config/ruff.toml and .github/actions/lint-ruff/action.yml directly, and that's wrong. The action only runs ruff check (lint rules), not ruff format --check, and the selected rule set (E, F, W, I, UP, B, SIM) doesn't include Q (flake8-quotes). So Python isn't pinned to any quote style here either — same unpinned state as YAML, not "consistent with itself" via a formatter default that isn't actually being enforced.

That actually strengthens the original point: right now only Ruby is pinned (double-only, via inherited standard default), while YAML and Python are both open. So it's a two-vs-one split, not one-vs-two.