From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2003-02-01T01:14:39+09:00
Subject: Re: String#+

Hi,

In message "String#+"
    on 03/02/01, "Chris Pine" <nemo@hellotree.com> writes:

|This is a small thing, but one that has ever-so-slightly annoyed me for
|quite some time now.  Instead of generating a TypeError on non-string input,
|why not just call to_s on it?

Since + serves both addition (numbers) and concatenation (strings), it
is very wise to raise error early.  Wrap with String() or add .to_s
explicitly if you're sure.  It used to work as you expected, but we
regretted and changed the behavior for programming safety.  TypeError
annoys, but is better than running silently with garbage result.

We are not programming in Perl.  We care about type (or class) of
objects, even though we don't care about type of variables.

							matz.