From: Sam Roberts <sroberts@...>
Date: 2005-03-18T23:36:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Symbol vs String

Quoting jim@weirichhouse.org, on Thu, Mar 17, 2005 at 01:36:39PM +0900:
> On Wednesday 16 March 2005 09:29 pm, Sam Roberts wrote:
> > Quoting jim@weirichhouse.org, on Thu, Mar 17, 2005 at 11:08:59AM +0900:
> > > Use Strings for their content.  Use Symbols for their arbitrary
> > > uniqueness.
> >
> > I used to do this, but ran into problems.
> [...]
> >   :octet-stream
> >
> >   NameError: undefined local variable or method `stream' for main:Object
> >           from (irb):3
> >   'octet-stream'.intern
> >       ==>:"octet-stream"
> 
> Why couldn't you do :octet_stream ?  If your answer is because the dash comes 
> from outside ruby, then I would suggest that the content ("_" vs "-") is 
> important ... indicating that you should use strings.

Maybe I don't know what you mean by "arbitrarily unique".

"_" vs "-" is no more (or less) important than "a" vs. "z".

Cheers,
Sam