From: Ned Konz <ned@...>
Date: 2002-07-05T15:13:30+09:00
Subject: Re: is there a better string.each?

On Thursday 04 July 2002 10:29 pm, Tom Sawyer wrote:

> they fact of the matter is: a string is an ordered set of
> characters and an an array is an ordered set of objects. thus the
> array is the general data structure. a string is a subset of array
> in that it is the same type of data structure but limited to
> characters (which i think is an object type that is lacking in
> ruby), yet a string is also a superset of array in that it has many
> additional methods.

In many Smalltalks String is either a kind of Array or a sibling class 
(subclass of ArrayedCollection, perhaps, as in Squeak).

I do think it's unfortunate that Ruby has no Character type; equating 
characters with integers smells too much like C, and will cause 
problems with internationalization.

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com
GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE