From: Robert Dober <robert.dober@...>
Date: 2007-05-16T20:41:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Why was the "Symbol is a String"-idea dropped?

On 5/16/07, Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/16/07, Trans <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On May 16, 5:44 am, "Sven Suska (enduro)" <sven71...@suska.org> wrote:
> > > Subclassing alone would not be enough, to solve the problem above,
> > > also, String#== and Symbol#== would have to be defined such that  "a" == :a
> > > And also #hash would have to be defined accordingly.
> > >
> > > Then you would still have the two different kinds of objects ("a" and :a)
> > > but they would behave quite the same  except for modifying methods.
> >
> > While I think Symbol probably could use at least few of String's
> > manipulation methods, putting that aside, I wonder how it would effect
> > things just to make :a == "a" ?
> >
> Well there is precendent, 2 == 2.0 and so on
> On the other hand, what should happen in case statements? Maybe it
> would acutally be better to make :a === 'a' but not :a == 'a'
>
>
Honestly I prefer to write

case s.to_s
   when 'a'

instead of
case s
     when 'a'

but the most explicit way to do this is maybe the most readable

case s
    when :a, 'a'

Cheers
Robert

P.S.
Tom is right that was an excellent resum�.
R


-- 
You see things; and you say Why?
But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?
-- George Bernard Shaw