From: Florian Gross <flgr@...>
Date: 2005-03-15T22:59:08+09:00
Subject: Re: how do you duck-type something to String, so String believes you?

ES wrote:

> Possibly a bit too clever. While I like the reversal of roles in this
> fashion to facilitate the current implementation, I'm somewhat leery
> of the concept.
> 
> First of all, an *single* explicit method is used, not the representative
> API of the class; for example in this instance, anything that defines
> #to_s
> could be considered to be valid input; sometimes more matching methods
> might be required. It is considerably harder to construct the idiom this
> way, so I can see the need for this compromise.

I'm not sure I get you there -- if anything that implemented .to_s would 
be considered a String "5" == 5 would be true as well...

> Secondly, the naming is confusing. #to_str? str is not a class and a very
> similar name #to_s does something different. A better choice would use the
> entire class name (lowercase would be fine) and clearly indicate that
> it's
> not necessarily being made into another class but used as an instance of
> the other class; hence SomeClass#as_string or something similar like my
> favourite SomeClass#quack_like_a_string.

I also think that :as_string would be clearer, but I'm not sure if 
having to learn this is worth the hassle of breaking compatibility and 
perhaps causing more confusion than good.