From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2005-12-31T05:03:20+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the difference between :foo and "foo" ?

On 30/12/05, Steve Litt <slitt@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On Friday 30 December 2005 10:35 am, Steve Litt wrote:
> [clip]
> > 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!
> >
> > SteveT
>
> The Ruby Newbie Guide to Symbols is here:
>
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/codecorn/ruby/symbols.htm

Steve:

Please edit your guide, as it is *not* correct when it says:

   A Ruby symbol is a thing that has both a number (integer) and a string.

This is not correct in any way. If you leave it as "A Ruby Symbol is a
thing", you're fine. But when you say that it "has" a number and a
string, you are incorrect. Symbols are not composed of the integer or
string values that you can convert Symbols to; they just are. The
value of a Symbol is not its String value or its Fixnum value, but
itself.

I strongly recommend rewriting your guide from that perspective,
because you are likely to greatly *increase* the confusion of newbies.
If you would like, I can see about possibly helping you edit this or
coauthor it such that it might become a useful article to be published
at Ruby Code & Style to explain where Symbols can be used and what
they are. Ultimately, though, trying to dig into the internals of
Symbols misses the point -- it's just something that represents
itself.

-austin
--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca