----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Thomas <Dave / PragmaticProgrammer.com>
To: ruby-talk ML <ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2001 3:02 PM
Subject: [ruby-talk:11067] Re: to_s and <<


> "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000 / hypermetrics.com> writes:
>
> > > And yet, this can't be the whole story, since the TypeErrors do
> > > happen.  Further detective work (and/or clarification by those ahead
> > > of me in the process :-) required....
> >
> > I've wondered about this too... Dave, could this be considered a bug
> > in The Book?
>
> Perhaps, but I don't think so. to_str is not the same as to_s. to_str
> only works on things that pretend to be Strings in the first place
> (String and Exception are two basic classes), so you'll get a type
> error if you use anything else.
>

Well, if you look at the << method, it just says it takes "anObject"...
I don't recall seeing anything about to_str (or to_s) anywhere...

I thought at first that I could use an arbitrary object there... but I guess
you have to define to_str if you want to do that?

Hal