From: Henry Maddocks <hmaddocks@...>
Date: 2012-06-21T05:58:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Symbols and Strings...


On 21/06/2012, at 8:50 AM, Bartosz Dziewoński wrote:

> 2012/6/20 Henry Maddocks <hmaddocks@me.com>:
>> 
>> On 20/06/2012, at 7:12 PM, Robert Klemme wrote:
>> 
>>> If at all
>>> the inheritance would be the other way round: a String is-a Symbol and
>>> it would extend the contract by mutating methods.
>> 
>> This is a very good point. String should be a sub class of Symbol. I wonder if this was considered.
> 
> This is an extremely bad idea.

Well a lot of people, including Matz, disagree with you.


> 
> Symbol is just that – a symbol. Internally it is stored as a *number*
> and in C code passed by-value, like Fixnum, instead of by-ref, like
> all other objects. It is only shown as a bit of text for display.

The internal representation is of no concern to the programmer, only it's utility. 
There seems to be a desire to be able to use String and Symbol interchangeably, hence this discussion.

Henry