From: John Feminella <johnf@...>
Date: 2011-02-17T01:01:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Why use a symbol in place of a variable?

> Another way to look at it is a symbol is it is an emnumerated scalar.

I don't think that's an accurate characterization, imo, since symbols
have no relationship or knowledge of other symbols. They are not a
collection of anything, and thus by definition can't be an
enumeration. Using your example, nothing stops you from writing

> my_dungeon.start(:bananas)

and that would be a perfectly valid parameter to supply. However, if
you wrote something like

> my_dungeon.start(DungeonSizes[:bananas])

that would clue you into the problem. In this case, DungeonSizes would
be more like the enumeration, into which a symbol would be the index
for the element of the enumeration you wanted to select.

~ jf
--
John Feminella
Principal Consultant, BitsBuilder
LI: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnxf
SO: http://stackoverflow.com/users/75170/



On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 10:34, Mike Stephens <rubfor@recitel.net> wrote:
> Another way to look at it is a symbol is it is an emnumerated scalar.
>
> You could have
>
> cavesize = 345
> my_dungeon.start(cavesize)
>
> However if caves are only ever Small, Medium and Large, then you can
> represent that finite set of options by passing :smallcave, :mediumcave
> or :largecave.
>
> A symbol can therefore more closely represent the logic of the problem.
>
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
>