From: gwtmp01@...
Date: 2006-01-05T13:07:37+09:00
Subject: Re: On Symbols


On Jan 4, 2006, at 7:49 PM, Jim Weirich wrote:
> The fact we can pretend that everything is a reference is a
> marvelous feature of the Ruby object model.

+1

In fact I think of Fixnum and Symbol literals as
just special variables pre-bound to references to particular
objects in the way that uninitialized instance variables
are pre-bound to the nil object, but unlike variables you
can't vary the binding.  I'd call them constants but then
everyone would get confused with that whiny group of variables
that start with an uppercase letter and then complain every-
time something changes.

Gary Wright