From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2004-11-30T13:02:40+09:00
Subject: Re: to_sym <=> to_str

On Tuesday, November 30, 2004, 1:43:42 PM, Sam wrote:

> Quoteing transami@runbox.com, on Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 11:17:26AM +0900:
>> If String has #to_sym wouldn't it make sense for Symbol to have #to_str ?

> I think the relationship would be:

>   String#to_sym, ..#to_s, ..#to_i, #to_a

> are all at the same level.

> They are all methods on types that can be converted to the target, but
> are not ALREADY of the type of the target of the conversion.

> The next level is:

> #to_str, #to_ary, #to_int all are supported by classes that ARE of that
> type (in the duck-type sense).

> That list could include #to_symbol... except there is nothing in ruby
> that IS a symbol, only symbols are symbols.

> My way of looking at it anyhow...

I think that in a sense, a symbol IS a string -- an immutable one.
Implicit conversion via Symbol#to_str makes sense to me.

Gavin