Getting rid of Object#equal?()?

Moin.

I think that we currently have too many equality methods with similar names:

==: same meaning
eql?: same value (for hashes)
equal?: identical object

I think that equal?() is rarely used and that removing it completely 
would make sense -- after all  a.id == b.id  is not much longer than 
a.equal?(b).

Renaming it might also be an option -- I think Object#identical?() would 
be a good name.

I would also like to see eql?() renamed, but I'm not sure about the name 
and it also seems to be used much more which would make a change more 
troublesome. Perhaps hash_equal?() would be a better name.

Anyway, if there is chances there should of course be a warning period.

Do (some of) the changes make sense?

Kind regards,
Florian Gross