From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2018-01-09T10:02:09-08:00
Subject: [ruby-core:84784] Re: [Ruby trunk Feature#14336] Create new method String#symbol? and deprecate Symbol class

rr.rosas@gmail.com wrote:
>
> You often say that symbols already exist in other languages and has been
> borrowed from them. Since I don't know those languages, let me ask you:
> do those languages support the equivalent of Ruby's Hash and allow both
> strings and symbols as keys? If so, haven't their users ever complained
> about that?

Smalltalk's hash (dictionary) does indeed allow both symbols and strings
as keys (and the language differentiates between them as Ruby does.)

Though, the existence of manual pages like the following ("Two flavors
of equality") suggests the distinction was anticipated to be a point of
confusion for some users:

https://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/manual/html_node/Two-flavors-of-equality.html


Regards,

Bill



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