From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2003-07-21T02:06:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Array and Hash to_s

Hi,

In message "Array and Hash to_s"
    on 03/07/20, Ben Giddings <ben@thingmagic.com> writes:

|The main issue I have with these default to_s calls is that you seem to 
|lose a lot of information in the conversion.  On the other hand, I 
|think the output from Array#inspect and Hash#inspect is great.  It's 
|easily readable and contains all the info I want.

Hmm, "to_s" means "stringify", that is making a string out of an
object.  It may or may not produce human readable output.

|I'm having trouble coming up with a good example of where having a 
|reasonable output from some_random_object.to_s should be useful, but 
|how about this:

I don't deny your desire.  It is understandable.  But:

  * I don't think we will change "to_s" behavior for compatibility
    reason.  we may add a new string converter method for this
    purpose.

  * _you_ have to define your desire in detail; purpose, behavior, and
    corner cases, to show us it's generic enough to add in the core.

Note you can add methods very easily even to the predefined classes in
Ruby.

							matz.