Ruby 2.7 - Time#inspect separated from Time#to_s

Dec 23, 2019

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Alkesh Ghorpade

I am a seasoned developer with over 9 years of experience in Ruby on Rails and Golang. My passion lies in tackling complex data structures and algorithm problems, always pushing myself to learn and grow. In my downtime, I find solace in the pages of books and the soothing sounds of a guitar. But I'm not just a one-trick pony! I love to stay active and challenge myself in other ways too. Whether it's on the football pitch, cricket field, table tennis table, or badminton court, I'm always up for some fun activities.

1 minute read

Ruby 2.7 separated Time#to_s method from Time#inspect.

They were separated due to some troubles in the comparison of Time objects whose fractional parts were different.

For example, there are multiple time objects which are generated in a single HTTP request. They would be definitely different by some seconds. So assert_equal should fail.

But when we use assert_equal with inspect, it will return true as the fractional parts are ignored.

Before Ruby 2.7.0

Time.now.utc.to_s
=> "2019-12-10 13:25:22 UTC"

Time.now.utc.inspect
=> "2019-12-10 13:25:22 UTC"

(Time.now.utc + 0.1).to_s
=> "2019-12-10 13:25:22 UTC"

(Time.now.utc + 0.1).inspect
=> "2019-12-10 13:25:22 UTC"

In Ruby 2.7.0

Time.now.utc.to_s
=> "2019-12-10 13:25:22 UTC"

Time.now.utc.inspect
=> "2019-12-10 13:25:22.751418 UTC"

(Time.now.utc + 0.1).to_s
=> "2019-12-10 13:25:22 UTC"

(Time.now.utc + 0.1).inspect
=> "2019-12-10 13:25:22 17271867520919273597/22517998136852480000 UTC"

As seen above the fractional part is now not ignored when we use inspect.