From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-12-03T05:52:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Make a symbol represent a method?

On Dec 2, 2005, at 2:38 PM, Chris Irish wrote:

> One more thing, Can I use the symbol to call a method and pass  
> arguments to it?  Or is it just a reference to the methods name so  
> that's not possible?

You're misunderstanding what a Symbol is.

A Symbol is is just an immutable String for Ruby.  A simple data type.

One use for Symbols is to reference a method by name:

send(:method_name)

You could also use a String for this though:

send("method_name")

And you may want to use Symbols for something completely different.   
I generally use them for keys to my internal Hashes:

@parsers = { :leading_fields => Parser.new,
              :row            => Parser.new,
              :line_endings   => Parser.new }

To answer your question, a little indirectly, yes, send() allows you  
to pass arguments to the function:

send(:method_name, arg_1, arg_2, ...)

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II