From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-11-03T21:12:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Ruby

From: "Albert Wagner" <alwagner@tcac.net>


> > [Enric:]
> > Why are Strings arrays of integers ? aString[0] is an integer, yes, it's
> > the way it is, but I would like to have String as an array of chars, and
> > char if you want as a descendant of Integer (nice election because a
> > Unicode String is and array of double chars i.e. integer), I don't know
> > you, but for me aString[i].chr =='x' is somewhat unnatural, because it
> > breaks the semantic of a String, so it's not intuitive for me.
>
> It is not intuitive to many people.  There have been long discussions on the
> pros and cons.
>

It's probably not intuitive to *anybody* (except perhaps Matz).  However, I see
no particular justification for it being any other way, and in fact it's
changing in 1.7 isn't it?  Anyway, my point is: you'll never forget it now.
And if you're like me, you won't care either.

But to nitpick, a String is *not* an array of integers.  It is a String :)

Other options, if you're testing equality of an individual character:

  string[i] == ?x
  string[i,1] == "x"

Cheers,
Gavin