Patrick Bennett wrote:

> I find it immensely useful when dealing with arrays to be able to 
> convert a source argument (that may or may not be in an array) into an 
> array so I can concatenate it, perform a set-union on it, etc. with a 
> destination array.
> What is the real reason for this, and if it's being obsoleted, what am I 
> supposed to use instead if I need to insure I'm dealing with an array ?
> 
> Thanks,
> Patrick Bennett
> 
> 
> 
I was also surprised to learn that Object#to_a is going to be obsolete. 
However, I immediately found a replacement for it that I like even more:

instead of doing
o.to_a

I do now
[ *o ]

And this is not reported as obsolete in Ruby 1.8.1 yet ;-)

Gennady.