On Wednesday, February 12, 2003, at 05:23 AM, 
dblack / candle.superlink.net wrote:

>
> What you're saying amounts to: if I can't think of a really great
> example of this, then anyone who does it deserves to have the core
> language shift under their feet.  Similarly, if inheriting from String
> is a bad idea, then the only reason for the change we're discussing is
> to punish people who've done it.  Somehow I don't think that's the
> whole story :-)

There was a recent update to the current 1.8 which might be of use
to those bitten by this change.  String#to_s will now return a String
by default.

class Name < String
   def initial
     scan(/[A-Z]/)[0].to_s
   end
end