[ruby-core:84803] [Ruby trunk Feature#14336] Create new method String#symbol? and deprecate Symbol class

Issue #14336 has been updated by dsferreira (Daniel Ferreira).


Thank you very much Matz.

I don’t mind to give my time on that task. For a long time I’ve been willing to contribute to ruby core but my professional contracts didn’t allow me.
Today I believe the situation is about to change.
I will ask my company the green light and will work hard on this endeavour once I get it.

Something tells me that it will be possible. That ruby 3 is the right moment to make this happen and I trust a lot in my intuition. I agree with all of you that we should not allow ruby to break backwards compatibility without a clear transition path and try our very best to keep breakage at its bare minimum if we really must have it.

I believe it is clear to everyone by now my passion for ruby and how much I think this situation is a big minus in the language rating standards which really impacts me in a daily basis since ruby as been a very important part of my life since many years and it will continue to be for many years to come.

I am what I am today because of ruby. I can say it. If it wasn’t ruby I wouldn’t be able to be what I am today in professional terms so this commitment is my payback to all of you that have worked very hard to provide me the tools that allowed me to succeed.

I will need some cooperation and support from experienced ruby core members to act as mentors on this task since it will be a comborsome task but we do have the time as our friend since ruby 3 is not gonna be out so soon.

And in the end if we reach the conclusion it is not worthy then I will be someone with a very deep knowledge of cruby codebase and for me that is invaluable.

How does it sound to you?

----------------------------------------
Feature #14336: Create new method String#symbol? and deprecate Symbol class
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/14336#change-69517

* Author: dsferreira (Daniel Ferreira)
* Status: Rejected
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: 
* Target version: 
----------------------------------------
From  the discussions on the three previous issues related to the String vs Symbol subject ([5964](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/5964), [7792](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7792), [14277](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/14277)) there are some conclusions we can assume:
* Current String vs Symbol is not the ideal scenario. See: Matz and Koichi comments.
* Current philosophy is to use Symbols as identifiers and Strings when strings are needed.
* Current situation is that Symbols are being used in many code bases as strings except for strings that really need the String methods.
* Current situation is that we are designing APIs to handle both String and Symbol inputs forcing an overhead of API development.

I propose the deprecation of `Symbol` class and the introduction of `String#symbol?`.

```ruby
foo = :foo
foo.class # => String
foo.symbol? # => true
bar = "bar"
bar.class # => String
bar.symbol? # => false
```

For backwards compatibility transition path I propose:

```ruby
class Symbol
  def self.===(var)
    warn ("Warning message regarding deprecated class")
    if var.class == Symbol
      true
    elsif var.class == String && var.symbol?
      true
    else
      false
    end
  end
end

class String
  def is_a?(klass)
    case klass
    when String
      true
    when Symbol
      self.symbol?
    else
      false
    end
  end
end
```



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