From: Sebastian Hungerecker <sepp2k@...>
Date: 2008-05-04T02:56:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Why there is not "replace" method for Fixnum?

Iñaki Baz Castillo wrote:
> But Fixnum has not this method "replace", neither Float.

Consider this:
a = 5
b = 5
a.object_id == b.object_id #=> true

So a and b point to the same object even if there was no "a = b" anywhere. 
That is because in ruby there is only one single instance of any integer, so 
two variables pointing to 5 always point to the same object. This is because 
of performance. As a consequence of this something like 5.replace 6 would 
change *all* occurences of 5 to 6 which clearly would not be the desired 
behaviour. So there is no Integer#replace.

HTH,
Sebastian
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