From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2013-02-08T10:57:33+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:52021] Re: [ruby-trunk - Feature #7792] Make symbols and strings the same thing

Rodrigo Rosenfeld Rosas wrote:
> 
> I'm really curious what kind of programs rely on symbols behaving 
> differently from strings.

One example:

Since symbols aren't garbage collected, my Ruby-based RPC system
is designed by default to convert symbols in incoming messages to
strings instead.  (PacketBuf.preserve_symbols_on_extract = false)

This has led to sending certain internal messages with names
consisting of symbols instead of strings.  These messages cannot
be spoofed by an external source, as there's no way for a remote
sender to produce messages locally containing symbols.

(If not for the garbage collection problem, I would have designed
the system to preserve externally generated symbols, and so would
have then required a different approach to distinguish internal
vs. external message names.  So current design is arbitrary in
that sense, but nevertheless, the symbol/string distinction is
being put to use.)


Regards,

Bill