From: Daniel Amelang Date: 2005-03-21T10:17:35+09:00 Subject: Re: Paul Graham recommends Ruby I'm a little confused about the advantage of your suggestion: :[:key => 'value', :foo => 'bar'] over this: [key:value, foo:bar] (the key:value syntax is already part of ruby 1.9) I'd be interested in the explaination of your preference. About the empty hash idea, the :[] syntax represents a symbol (try this '"[]".to_sym), so it might not be such a good idea. Then again, I am no matz :) Dan