From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2013-02-08T10:16:06+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:52019] Re: [ruby-trunk - Feature #7792] Make symbols and strings the same thing

Hi,

In message "Re: [ruby-core:52017] Re: [ruby-trunk - Feature #7792] Make symbols and strings the same thing"
    on Fri, 8 Feb 2013 09:26:38 +0900, Rodrigo Rosenfeld Rosas <rr.rosas@gmail.com> writes:

|Thank you for your feedback, Matz. I'd really never suspect such a 
|change could break so many programs...
|
|I'm really curious what kind of programs rely on symbols behaving 
|differently from strings. But I guess you won't remember which programs 
|would be them, will you?

It was long long ago.  But some programs distinguished symbols and
strings as hash keys, for example.

Symbols are taken from Lisp symbols, and they has been totally
different beast from strings.  They are not nicer (and faster)
representation of strings. But as Ruby stepped forward its own way,
the difference between symbols and strings has been less recognized by
users.

							matz.