From: "John W. Kennedy" <jwkenne@...>
Date: 2006-01-02T04:32:56+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the difference between :foo and "foo" ?

James Britt wrote:
> Austin Ziegler wrote:
> ...
> 
>> Do I *really* care that they're stored in Ruby on the internal symbol 
>> table?
>>
>> No. Not in the last two and a half years have I cared once. Sure, it's
>> nice that they only end up representing a single object, but I really
>> have never cared how they're represented. I use them for what they
>> *are*, not how they're implemented. And what they are, is names.
> 
> 
> After trying to follow all this, I've come to see Symbols as being more 
> akin to numbers than strings.
> 
> They're numbers with a human face.

In some ways, a comparison with interned strings in Java can be helpful.

-- 
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
   -- Charles Williams.  "Judgement at Chelmsford"