From: Jeremy Heiler <jeremyheiler@...>
Date: 2011-06-25T04:57:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Honoring #to_ary and such

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Intransition <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, for about the first time I am writing a library that has to be
> very strict about types. Per the usual I am testing types with `case`,
> e.g.
>
>    def foo=(foo)
>     @foo = \
>       case foo
>       when Array
>          foo
>       when String
>          [foo]
>       else
>         raise
>       end
>    end
>
> Now as I do this it occurs to me, shouldn't I also honor anything that
> responds_to?(:to_ary) as an Array? And if so, what's the "usual" way
> to handle it then?

It depends. Do you want to? I suppose the only disadvantage would be
the cost of an object possibly creating a new array when to_ary is
invoked.

It might be worth letting the user decide with a second `force =
false` parameter.

I am also wondering, what makes a String special here as opposed to a
Fixnum or any other object?