From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2008-12-17T19:09:33+09:00
Subject: Re: A question about ruby array

Hi --

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Zhao Yi wrote:

> I read some ruby examples and found there is a syntax I don't
> understand. When getting an array element, it uses "array[:id]". I
> wander why there is a colon before the index. What does this mean?

It's actually hashes, not arrays, that use this syntax (see other
reply in this thread). What the :id thing means is that :id is a
Symbol object. Symbol is a class of objects that correspond directly
to entries in Ruby's internal symbol table. There's one entry for
every identifier in use while your program is running: every variable
name, method name, and constant. If you want to see them all, you can
do:

   Symbol.all_symbols

in irb.

The symbol table is really part of the inner workings of the
interpreter, but Ruby exposes it to programmer-space through the
Symbol class. Symbols have characters; therefore, they're used a lot
in situations where you might also use strings (such as hash keys).
They're more lightweight in terms of processing than strings are: a
string has to know how to resize itself, for example, whereas a symbol
is immutable.


David

-- 
David A. Black / Ruby Power and Light, LLC
Ruby/Rails consulting & training: http://www.rubypal.com
Coming in 2009: The Well-Grounded Rubyist (http://manning.com/black2)