From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2005-12-30T02:22:39+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the difference between :foo and "foo" ?

On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 02:09:40AM +0900, Edward Faulkner wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 01:50:14AM +0900, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > If you tell me that Ruby symbols are basically just Lisp symbols,
> > implemented in an OOP way by way of a symbol class, I think I could
> > probably come up with a succinct and clear explanation of what a Ruby
> > symbol is that would remove a lot of the ambiguity, but so far I still
> > don't know if that's what a Ruby symbol actually is.
> 
> Yes, I think Ruby symbols and Lisp symbols are the same thing.  The
> issue is just slightly obscured because Ruby glosses over the Lisp
> concept of "quote" by building the quote syntax directly into the
> symbol-literal syntax.  :mysymbol means the same thing as Lisp's
> 'mysymbol, except the whole thing is treated as a single literal
> token, instead of parsing to (quote mysymbol).

Thank you.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);