From: transfire@...
Date: 2015-03-02T23:49:09+00:00
Subject: [ruby-core:68385] [Ruby trunk - Bug #10924] String#b

Issue #10924 has been updated by Thomas Sawyer.


Benoit Daloze wrote:
> Note #b is more #binary than #ascii.

That at least make a little more sense out of the name #b, but that needs some explanation since everything is actually binary underneath regardless of encoding. (Note the word "binary" is not mentioned at all in the docs.)

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Bug #10924: String#b
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/10924#change-51734

* Author: Thomas Sawyer
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: 
* ruby -v: 2.1.0
* Backport: 2.0.0: UNKNOWN, 2.1: UNKNOWN, 2.2: UNKNOWN
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Well, I just learned about the String#b [method](http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.1.0/String.html#methodi-b) today. And of course it breaks the [Radix](https://github.com/rubyworks/radix) gem :-(  Honestly, back when I create Radix in 2009 I could not have imagined a safer bet than `#b` for an extension if I tried. And yet sure enough, Ruby makes `String#b` an official method for converting to ASCII 8-bit. Is it really such a popular method to get such a short name? I mean `String#ascii` wouldn't have been a better choice? To go along with `#ascii_only`?

Okay, so much for my mini-rant. So bottom line, can I ask that this method not be called `#b`? Even putting the conflict with Radix aside, I think it's a pretty bad name for a standard Ruby method. Just read it: "#b". Do you have any idea what that does without looking it up in the documentation? Nope, no way. 

(P.S. Bug or feature, not sure what to label it. Left it a bug b/c it did [break people's code](https://github.com/rubyworks/radix/issues/10).)



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