From: "drbrain (Eric Hodel)" Date: 2012-11-24T06:22:13+09:00 Subject: [ruby-core:49907] [ruby-trunk - Feature #7377] #indetical? as an alias for #equal? Issue #7377 has been updated by drbrain (Eric Hodel). Boris, sorry to break it to you, but "identical" means both "similar in every detail" (so not a misuse as in "identical twins") and also "expressing a [mathematical] identity" according to the Oxford English Dictionary. If we already have a convention and need to debate the meanings of a proposed new convention it is probably best if we just drop the discussion. By carrying on with the existing conventions we reduce cognitive load on rubyists. New rubyists learning by themselves don't have to wonder "why can I do this two ways?" and "which way is the recommended way?". People who teach ruby won't need to tell new rubyists "we have two ways to do this because of a long discussion that would distract from the current lesson". Long-time rubyists won't need to wonder "Why was a second way of doing this added? How does it make my life better?" The pursuit of a perfect language is noble, but there are always going to be rough edges. Invalidating years of working code and years of blog posts and instruction to rearrange a few methods to be more "perfect" is probably not the best use of our time. ---------------------------------------- Feature #7377: #indetical? as an alias for #equal? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7377#change-33666 Author: aef (Alexander E. Fischer) Status: Open Priority: Normal Assignee: matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) Category: core Target version: As my feature request #7359 got rejected, here a more backward-compatible approach: In my opinion the difference between #eql? and #equal? is really unintuitive. How about making their difference more obvious by giving one of them a more accurate name? My proposal is to alias #equal? to #identical?. I'll write a patch, if this is acceptable. -- http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/