Hi --

I'm wondering if someone could summarize for me the rationale for
making Symbol a subclass of String in 1.9.  I understand that symbols
and strings both represent text, and have certain characteristics in
common, but I always thought of symbols as an internally used data
type that Ruby exposes, essentially unchanged, for our use.  It's hard
to adjust to thinking of them as string descendants.

I guess my instinct would be to have a module -- TextLike, or
something -- that both String and Symbol mixed in, rather than have
Symbol be a subclass of String.


David

-- 
                   David A. Black | dblack / wobblini.net
Author of "Ruby for Rails"   [1] | Ruby/Rails training & consultancy [3]
DABlog (DAB's Weblog)        [2] | Co-director, Ruby Central, Inc.   [4]
[1] http://www.manning.com/black | [3] http://www.rubypowerandlight.com
[2] http://dablog.rubypal.com    | [4] http://www.rubycentral.org