From: Chris Carter <cdcarter@...>
Date: 2007-02-10T00:09:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Finding help

On 2/9/07, Luke Ivers <technodolt@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm wanting to figure out what the &: syntax does, but I'm not exactly sure
> how to search for it given that it contains special characters... a search
> on google for "ruby &:" doesn't really give me anything worth looking at,
> and I just checked through the first edition of the Pickaxe (I don't own the
> second edition), and couldn't find anything in there, either (although,
> sometimes I miss really obvious things, so I suppose it's possible I just
> missed it in there).
>
> If someone could either explain it to me, or point me in the direction of
> something that explains it, I would greatly appreciate it.
>
> (And I also tried searching on ruby-forum.org for &:... it returns
> "Application Error")
>
> Thanks.
>
Hi Luke,
The &: syntax is the famous Symbol#to_proc hack.  The & operator calls
#to_proc on the object it is connected to, in this case a Symbol.
This isn't in Ruby core, but it is in Rails, and a bunch of extension
frameworks.  Essentially it takes the first argument passed to it, and
runs the method that was passed in symbol form.

http://sn.oplo.ws/index.php?title=Symbol#to_proc

-- 
Chris Carter
concentrationstudios.com
brynmawrcs.com