From: danieldasilvaferreira@... Date: 2018-01-11T15:08:00+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:84834] [Ruby trunk Feature#14336] Create new method String#symbol? and deprecate Symbol class Issue #14336 has been updated by dsferreira (Daniel Ferreira). matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) wrote: > Daniel, don't try to read my mind. I tried years ago because I wanted to experiment what others liked (yes, we had similar people like you since the old days). Thanks for the clarification Matz. I wasn���t trying to read your mind. It was just a logical deduction. I get it. It made sense for others. > And so many of our tests, samples, and utilities were failed miserably. Probably, with like 99,999% certain my endeavour will be much worst and if that is the case it will be work to be forgotten. Like I said: I���m comfortable with that. I respect very much all of your experience and knowledge. When I say ���your��� I mean not just you as the leader but all of you as a team. I know very little about the language compared to you. The key here for me is that you didn���t say ���it is not gonna to happen���. You left a ���but��� behind. An open door that I���m willing to take. > During the experiment, I found out the symbol is the fundamental part of the language. Once again Matz many thanks for the insight. It is an invaluable knowledge that you are passing to me. I will keep that in mind during the exercise. > If you are going to make your own experiment, it's good. I am curious about your approach and the result. The result may persuade me in the future. That is all I need to hear. Your curiosity about the work I will do is my biggest motivation right now. > You might feel I am too conservative. Not even close. I already said: l totally agree with you that it is a bad thing to break backwards compatibility. My goal is to come up with a proper transition path like requested by Koichi whilst keeping breakage as minimal as possible. And once again I state that I deeply respect all of you. Thank you very much Matz for this opportunity! ---------------------------------------- Feature #14336: Create new method String#symbol? and deprecate Symbol class https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/14336#change-69547 * 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 ``` -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/ Unsubscribe: