Trans wrote:
> Is all this really neccessary? Are these methods really ever usful for
> anything else but Strings and derivatives thereof? --What would you
> include them in? And would you ever really be more inclined to write:
> Inflector.pluralize(a) over a.pluralize
> 
> Perhaps some people use Ruby in completely non-OOP ways. I guess they
> would appriciate this design. If so should that be something we should
> always try to accomodate?

This is a picture of backward compatibility.  The Inflector module was
used internally before deciding, months later, that its behavior is
generally useful for String.

But why was it in a module in the first place?  Because we only needed
these methods for Rails and didn't want to bloat up String's public
interface.  There are no 'friend' methods or means to extend String only
within a given module/namespace.  The ability to extend base classes
within a namespace (and indeed, a clearer distinction between namespaces
and modules) would be useful, but I think it could be a misfeature that
increases complexity and hurts Ruby.

jeremy