From: Devin Mullins <twifkak@...>
Date: 2006-12-21T23:18:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Symbols vs Strings

matt wrote:
> 1) For rails apps that use link_to :blah   
> 
> where is :blah being made a symbol?  Is it in the base controller?
:blah is made a symbol the first time that the interpreter comes across 
the :blah token, either in your source code or in the Rails source code. 
Each subsequent time that the interpreter finds :blah, it points it to 
the preexisting symbol.

> How do I know that I need to use :blah, and not some other symbol ?
Convention. You're just passing a Hash, and Rails cares about certain 
key/value pairs in that Hash.

> 2)  Is there any relation of a Ruby Symbol and a C++ pointer or
> reference ?  It sounded like that to me as I was reading through, but I
> could be wrong.
Not really. All variables in Ruby are references.

HTH,
Devin