From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2005-08-08T16:41:09+09:00
Subject: Re: String#to_ary and Test::Unit

Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
> 
> I don't think providing to_ary for objects which are not really
> arrays.  In this case, puts recurse for objects with to_ary, then each
> array returned from to_ary contains objects with to_ary (strings),
> then infinite recursion.

I'd go further, and say that String should not implement Enumerable - as
it is, any code that wants to recursively traverse collections has to
include a check for String so that it doesn't get into the infinite
"String is a collection of Strings" recursion. each_byte, each_word and
each_line (without any default 'each') should provide most of the
functionality people need anyway - I can't remember ever needing to call
map or inject on a String unless I'd already #split or #scanned it into
an Array first. 

martin