[ruby-core:28449] Re: [Bug #1893] Recursive Enumerable#join is surprising

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 12:14 AM, Yukihiro Matsumoto <[e-mail]>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> In message "Re: [ruby-core:28422] [Bug #1893] Recursive Enumerable#join is
> surprising"
>     on Wed, 3 Mar 2010 00:57:26 +0900, Yusuke Endoh <[e-mail]>
> writes:
>
> |I guess adding Enumerator#to_ary is a right solution.
>
> I don't think so, supplying to_ary means that object can be considered
> as an array, which is not always the case.
>
>                                                        matz.
>

Argh, right. Perhaps an #as_ary, or #as_array, to indicate that the object
may coerced to an array.

#to_a is too loose for this: it says the object has an array representation.

#to_ary is too strict: it says the object may be treated as an array, even
without calling the method.

#as_ary is in between: it says the object may be treated as an array with
coercion, so call the method.

This is a similar situation with to_s/to_str and the proposed to_r/to_rat,
to_f/to_flo. I think these confusions could be resolved with as_str and
as_rat.

The fact that many classes incorrectly provide #to_ary is good evidence, too
(much like classes that incorrectly provide #to_str). From Benoit's comment:

  2 Net::HTTPResponse#to_ary
  3 Nokogiri::XML::NodeSet#to_ary
  4 Rake::FileList#to_ary
  5 WEBrick::HTTPUtils::FormData#to_ary

These would be better stated as #as_ary.

jeremy