From: Christian Neukirchen Date: 2005-12-31T02:42:35+09:00 Subject: Re: What is the difference between :foo and "foo" ? Steve Litt writes: > On Friday 30 December 2005 08:06 am, Christian Neukirchen wrote: >> Steve Litt writes: >> > By the way, your article is obviously needed, and you should probably >> > refine it as time goes on. The fact that we had so many responses that at >> > least in part contradicted each other indicates to me that symbols are >> > perhaps the most surprising element of Ruby, which is otherwise not a >> > surprising language at all. >> >> That just means you didn't dig deep enough into Ruby (yet). ;-) > > Then neither did the 20+ other people, some long time Ruby users, who couldn't > put forth an explanation clear enough to settle the issue amongst the > majority. > > With all the controversy, including some piping to a killfile, the issue isn't > *my* depth of digging, it's either *everyone's* depth of digging, or it's an > issue of :symbols being a particularly surprising element of Ruby. I haven't > heard this level of disagreement about blocks, methods, iterators and the > like. Heck, for two cents I'll document it myself! Oh, I'm sorry. I think you got me wrong. I was refering to the "most suprising element" for you. There are mystic parts of ruby that are far more suprising. Personally, I don't know why people have such big problems with Symbol, and I'll probably not ever understand. Just take them for granted and use them. > SteveT -- Christian Neukirchen http://chneukirchen.org