From: Shadowfirebird <shadowfirebird@...>
Date: 2011-03-08T22:15:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Duplicate methods removal in Ruby's TODO ?

Excerpts from David Unric's message of Tue Mar 08 12:30:06 +0000 2011:
> Hi,
> 
> as you know for sure, Ruby defines several method aliases of base
> classes to appeal/(make it easier to grasp) programmers comming from
> different languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp etc.).
> 
> Array:
>   'slice' and '[]'
>   'collect' and 'map'
>   'inspect' and 'to_s'
> 
> Enumerable:
>   'find_all' and 'select'
>   'find' and 'detect'
>   'entries' and 'to_a'
>   'inject' and 'reduce'
>   'include?' and 'member?'
> 
> Hash:
>   'store' and '[]'
>   'each' and 'each_pair'
>   'key?' and 'has_key?'
>   'value?' and 'has_value?'
>   'length' and 'size'
>   'merge' and 'update'
> 
> ...
> 
> Just curious about possible removal of method aliases in a future ? I
> know it would be very difficult decision to break backward
> compatibility, but because these are synonyms/aliases it won't be too
> hard to write conversion tool for existing sources.
> 
> Is there same intention to clean Ruby's core libraries ?
> When'll be the time, Ruby would need no more to attract programmers from
> different envirnoments and start with cleaning out ?

Good gods, I hope not.  Where would the advantage be, if these methods are just aliases for each other?  And think of the number of programmers you would alienate!