From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2008-07-29T06:29:29+09:00
Subject: Re: String.intern vs String.to_sym

On Jul 28, 2008, at 14:07 PM, Ian Hunter wrote:
> Can anyone make a case for ever using String.intern?  It seems to be
> nothing more than an alias to to_sym on String, and since it's not
> defined on Symbol, you can't ducktype a var to get a symbol.

#intern came first, #to_sym is an alias of #intern.

> I'm trying to understand why this even exists in the Ruby language, it
> doesn't seem like it would be useful for anything.  variable.to_sym
> seems to be the safer route to always use.

It's useful for backwards compatibility.