Coercion: Cast with kernel methods instead of to_* methods?

[maxlinc]

Currently Hashie is coercing to core types with conversion methods:

type	method
Integer	#to_i
Float	#to_f
Complex	#to_c
Rational	#to_r
String	#to_s
Symbol	#to_sym

Some of these methods are pretty lenient and may produce undesirable results. There are Kernel methods to cast types that are more strict, like Float:

"abcd".to_f # => 0.0
Float("abcd") # ArgumentError: invalid value for Float(): "abcd"

Would it be better if Hashie used the stricter approach by default?

[dblock]

Yes, I think we can all agree that it would be better, however this would introduce some interesting behavior from the user POV. I wonder whether we want to support both, configure it globally, deprecate? Either way I think you should try to PR the replacement one, lets see what breaks in existing specs alone.