From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2007-05-14T01:07:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Why was the "Symbol is a String"-idea dropped?

Hi,

In message "Re: Why was the "Symbol is a String"-idea dropped?"
    on Sun, 13 May 2007 17:20:49 +0900, Xavier Noria <fxn@hashref.com> writes:

|Just wanted to point out that the original question is why Ruby core  
|changed their mind, not what people think in general about relating  
|String and Symbol. Perhaps the question could be sent to ruby-core as  
|well.

We once changed Symbol as subclass of String to see how it goes, and
met many compatibility problems.  People distinguishes Symbols and
String far more than we expected.  So we just abandoned the idea.

							matz.