From: "NARUSE, Yui" <naruse@...>
Date: 2009-11-21T14:43:14+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:26854] Re: Internals: #to_s .vs. #to_str?

Kurt Stephens wrote:
> Is there a description of the semantic differences between #to_s and
> #to_str?  Are there any particular constraints on the results of these
> methods?  Is it considered "legal" to return frozen Strings in some
> cases for either of the two?   Is one used internal for implicit casts?
> 
> I have some ideas that may reduce GC work and improve large String
> concatenation.
> 
> I do remember a discussion about the differences between #to_a and
> #to_ary, but I don't quite remember why they are semantically different.

to_int, to_str, to_ary, to_hash are fot implicit conversion.
path.to_str is called in path of following code, if path is not String:
  open(path){|f| ... }

to_i, to_s, to_a are explicit conversion.

David Flanagan's Programing Language Ruby describes
those type conversion of Ruby at 3.8.7.

-- 
NARUSE, Yui  <naruse@airemix.jp>