Ruby send vs __send__

Question

I understand the concept of some_instance.send but I\'m trying to figure out why you can call this both ways. The Ruby Koans imply that there is some reason bey

Answer 1

__send__ exists so it can't be over-written by accident.

As for why send exists: I can't speak for anyone else, but object.send(:method_name, *parameters) looks nicer than object.__send__(:method_name, *parameters), so I use send unless I need to use __send__.