From: Ben Lovell <benjamin.lovell@...>
Date: 2009-05-26T02:28:09+09:00
Subject: Re: hash assignment [:x] vs ['x']

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On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Mk 27 <halfcountplus@intergate.com> wrote:

> Being totally new to ruby, I just noticed that using
>
> bob['phone']
>
> which coming from perl is a style I'm used to, results in a separate key
> than
>
> bob[:phone]
>
> That seems slightly weird, I had assumed the :form is just a shorthand
> like %w(  ).  So -- is there anything more that I need to understand
> about this distinction?


The first example is indexing via a string, the second is via a ruby symbol.
You can think of a symbol as essentially a (very) lightweight string usually
used for keying into hashes and general naming of things.

 Rgds,
Ben

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