From: Steve Litt <slitt@...>
Date: 2005-12-29T04:47:16+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the difference between :foo and "foo" ?

On Wednesday 28 December 2005 02:32 pm, Alex Knaub wrote:
> 2005/12/28, Surgeon <biyokuantum@gmail.com>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am a Ruby newbie. I wish I didn't post such a simple question here
> > but I had to.
> > What is the difference between :foo (a keyword) and "foo"(a string).
> > Can they be used interchangeably? Are they fundamentally same and is
> > the only difference performance?
>
> http://onestepback.org/index.cgi/Tech/Ruby/SymbolsAreNotImmutableStrings.re
>d

The preceding URL tells me unequivically that symbols aren't strings, but 
really doesn't tell me too much about what they are, other than what, 
names???

I still don't understand why it's

attr_reader :fname, :lname

instead of

attr_reader @fname, @lname

How does attr_reader know that :fname corresponds to @fname. Seems like magic 
to me.

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
http://www.troubleshooters.com
slitt@troubleshooters.com