From: Jacob Fugal <lukfugl@...>
Date: 2005-07-26T08:43:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Trying to understand symbols

On 7/25/05, Sam Kong <sam.s.kong@gmail.com> wrote:
> Symbols are often compared to strings like the following.
> 
> h1 = {:a => 1} #symbol. faster and immutable.
> h2 = {'a' => 1}
> 
> Ok, I can understand that.
> Now, is the term 'symbol' used the same meaning in the following text
> (from PickAxe2 page 314)?
> 
> <snip>
> When Ruby sees a name such as a in an expression, it needs to determine
> if it is a local variable reference or a call to a method with no parameters. To
> decide which is the case, Ruby uses a heuristic. As Ruby parses a source
> file, it keeps track of symbols that have been assigned to....
> </snip>

No, they are not the same.  The latter is the general meaning of
symbol in a parser context. The former is a specific type of value in
Ruby.

Jacob Fugal