[ruby-core:50007] [ruby-trunk - Feature #7377] #indetical? as an alias for #equal?

Issue #7377 has been updated by trans (Thomas Sawyer).


This is nothing unusual or difficult about an alias. Ruby has a number of them and it hasn't turned any nuby minds to mush. On the contrary, it really provides a good way for the language to mature naturally. Case in point, early on I used Enumerable#collect, others did as well. But now I only use #map. I've notice almost everyone uses #map now too. #collect is still around, and it probably will never leave us, and despite having two methods for the same thing I don't hear anyone complaining that it should. I for one am thankful we've had the choice (if it were up for debate back in the day I would have voted for #collect and been poorer for it).

The pursuit of a *better* language is noble, and thus should be pursued. After all, that's why we are all here. Isn't it? There is no invalidation of code and years of blog posts by adding an alias in any case. Besides that, other features of the language have changed much more drastically over the years in pursuit of the better language (the transition for #id to #object_id and the coming deprecation of #autoload come to mind). Asking for a simple alias because in conceptually makes more sense and helps to differentiate the more confusing question of how #equal? differs from #eql? is a feather by comparison --and it's how it makes our life better.

----------------------------------------
Feature #7377: #indetical? as an alias for #equal?
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7377#change-33781

Author: aef (Alexander E. Fischer)
Status: Open
Priority: Normal
Assignee: matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Category: core
Target version: next minor


As my feature request #7359 got rejected, here a more backward-compatible approach:

In my opinion the difference between #eql? and #equal? is really unintuitive. How about making their difference more obvious by giving one of them a more accurate name? 

My proposal is to alias #equal? to #identical?.

I'll write a patch, if this is acceptable.


-- 
http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/