[ Why does `Symbol#match` behave differently from `String#match` and `Regexp#match`? ]

String#match and Regexp#match return a MatchData when match succeeds:

"".match(//) # => #<MatchData "">
//.match("") # => #<MatchData "">
//.match(:"") # => #<MatchData "">

But Symbol#match returns the match position (like String#=~):

:"".match(//) # => 0

Why does Symbol#match behave differently? Is there a use case?

Answer 1

I reported it as a bug in Ruby core: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/11991. Let's see what they will say.

Update The questioned behaviour seems to have been a bug. It seems that from Ruby 2.4, Symbol#match will return a MatchData instance when a match succeeds.