From: Hans Mackowiak <lists@...>
Date: 2013-03-10T05:08:10+09:00
Subject: Re: type casting and connversion in ruby

because ruby is very strong typed, it does not have casting per se,
so without bad Hacks an object cant change its own type/class.

so to_i and others are always conversion.
but ruby has different kinds ...
to_int is implicit conversion, but only exist for classes which are 
already a number.
to_i is explicit conversion. it exist for other classes like String too


when the core defined methods wants an Integer for sample, ruby 
automatic tries to call to_int, but not to_i for non-Integer

there are other pairs too:
to_ary - to_a
to_hash - to_h
to_str - to_s

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