From: Joshua Muheim <forum@...>
Date: 2006-08-20T20:09:32+09:00
Subject: When to use :symbol and when to use String?

Hi all

I experience that the use of symbols and strings is not consistent in 
Rails.

Very often I can use symbols as values in methods:

has_and_belongs_to_many :musician_profiles,
                        :join_table => "musician_profiles_do_show_types" 
# string

has_and_belongs_to_many :musician_profiles,
                        :join_table => :musician_profiles_do_show_types 
# symbol

But for example the link_to helper does not allow me to use a symbol 
instead of a string:

link_to "Test", :controller => "news" # string

link_to "Test", :controller => :news # symbol

This second version using a symbol gives me this error:

undefined method `include?' for :news:Symbol

Is there any reason for this? And if not, is there a way to achieve its 
functionality also with symbols, maybe using a plugin?

Thanks for infos,
Joshua

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