Re: Getting rid of Object#equal?()?

Le 6/5/2005, "Yukihiro Matsumoto" <[e-mail]> a 馗rit:
>Hi,
>
>In message "Re: Getting rid of Object#equal?()?"
>    on Thu, 5 May 2005 23:57:30 +0900, Florian Gro゜ <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>|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).
>
>I'm not motivated too much to remove "equal?".  I assume Ruby users
>smart enough to distinguish above three without any confusion once
>they are told.  Are there any reason to remove?

I suppose it is not a huge source of bugs; however, the term
'equal' does not mean 'same'--although it may be implied--and
currently the same word (eql and equal) is used for two different
meanings.

Perhaps at least add the convenience of something like:

{1 => a}.equals? {1 => a}  # true, same semantic value
{1 => a}.is? {1 => a}      # false, different objects

a = b = {1 => a}

a.equals? b                # true, same semantic value
a.is? b                    # true, same object

Throw in #== as an alias for #equals? too.
Substitute #is? with #same? if you wish.

>							matz.

E

--
template<typename duck>
void quack(duck& d) { d.quack(); }