Thomas Enebo wrote:
>  One issue with naming is if you choose something too synonymy it 
> becomes difficult to separate the meaning between them:  to_a, to_ary, 
> to_list.   No suggestion. Just an observation that new Ruby users will 
> end up getting pretty confused if they cannot distinguish between these 
> method names.  to_splat probably will be something most new users will 
> ignore since they will have no idea what a splat is.

Of those proposed so far I like to_values best. There's no list/array 
ambiguity there, and it makes sense...expand this value into values.

I'd throw out a couple others:

to_splattable (perhaps most accurate; I tend to like to_splat also)
to_expansion (cousin of the aforementioned "expand")

I agree with others that to_a(ry) is pretty darn good, though I can 
understand someone might want separate methods for producing a 
general-purpose array and a splattable (though perhaps not good reasons).

-- 
Charles Oliver Nutter, JRuby Core Developer
headius / headius.com -- charles.o.nutter / sun.com
Blogging at headius.blogspot.com