From: Tom Sawyer <transami@...>
Date: 2003-02-04T07:48:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Designing API strings vs symbols?

On Monday 03 February 2003 03:35 pm, Travis Whitton wrote:
> Would most people prefer profile to exclusively use symbols, or should it
> use the mix of symbols and strings as defined above? I.e.,

i have considered this myself and i think the best answer is to support what 
the application demands. in other words. if spaces and such are illegal for 
your apps use, then use Symbol, if not then use String. if you mix then you 
have potential for errors.

CGI uses String because form element names can contain odd characters like 
spaces. 

of course if you internally support string, symbols are a subset of strings. 
so you could do #to_s on everything that comes in and effectively take them 
into account, but do not go the other way if there is any potential 
uncertainty.

-- 
tom sawyer, aka transami
transami@transami.net