Newbie question: what does string[:symbol] mean?

Rails
1

I found this in many rails source codes: string[:symbol]

'Some string'[:some_symbol']
Can someone tell me what it stands for?

Thks
2

This is likely a Haah reference – the string is the name of the Hash
object, and the symbol within is a key. For more on symbols, see:

http://glu.ttono.us/articles/2005/08/19/understanding-ruby-symbols

-faisal

3

Thanks Faisal,

I read almost all you can find about symbols and the string class, but I
couldn’t find how this must be helpful. For example, in the Beast forum
source code, a lot of messages in the rhtml files are writen this way:

<%= 'What is Beast?'[:beast_sidebar_title]%>
or <%= 'A small, light-weight forum in Rails with a scary name and a goal of around 500 lines of code when we\'re done.'[:beast_sidebar_body] %>

Is it something related to localization? Or can you access something
with this symbol?

4

On 9/1/07, Wahid L. [email protected] wrote:

I read almost all you can find about symbols and the string class, but I
couldn’t find how this must be helpful. For example, in the Beast forum
source code, a lot of messages in the rhtml files are writen this way:

<%= 'What is Beast?'[:beast_sidebar_title]%>
or <%= 'A small, light-weight forum in Rails with a scary name and a goal of around 500 lines of code when we\'re done.'[:beast_sidebar_body] %>

Is it something related to localization? Or can you access something
with this symbol?

Yup, localization. Beast uses the Gibberish plugin to this end.

http://errtheblog.com/post/4396

–
Chris W.
http://errfree.com // http://errtheblog.com