From: "charliesome (Charlie Somerville)" Date: 2013-02-14T10:36:39+09:00 Subject: [ruby-core:52243] [ruby-trunk - Feature #7849] Symbol#to_str Issue #7849 has been updated by charliesome (Charlie Somerville). Symbols are not Strings. I'm afraid this would only serve to blur the line even more. Rubyists need to stop using Symbols where they actually want a String, and vice versa. Strong -1 from me. ---------------------------------------- Feature #7849: Symbol#to_str https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/7849#change-36266 Author: trans (Thomas Sawyer) Status: Open Priority: Normal Assignee: Category: core Target version: next minor Even though a Symbol is not technically an honest-to-goodness String, from the standpoint of simple practicality it would help to have Symbol#to_str defined. There are times when we want an argument to accept a String or a Symbol, but don't really want it to accept any type of object under the sun that responds to #to_s --which is just about anything. This is especially the case when writing DSLs. Having Symbol#to_str is the nice solution to this. Defining Symbol#to_str may be an exception to the rule, but it's one worth making. -- http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/