Oh, sorry...wasn't clear. The problem with just doing the rb_obj_equal call for everything is that if people override eql? in their Ruby code, you need to call

Oh, sorry...wasn't clear. The problem with just doing the rb_obj_equal call for everything is that if people override eql? in their Ruby code, you need to call that overridden method, instead. The consequences of this decision mean that the comparison operator needs to be more complex.