# Re: does ":" have an anolog in another language?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-does-have-an-anolog-in-another-language/100448>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [July 28, 2006, 11:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-does-have-an-anolog-in-another-language/100448 "2006-07-28T23:43:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2006, 11:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-does-have-an-anolog-in-another-language/100448/1 "2006-07-28T23:43:11Z")

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-------------- Original message ----------------------  
From: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

> there’s no direct semantic connection to your variable called ‘a’.  
> Well, that just makes it even _more_ like Lisp than I was thinking. It  
> hadn’t occurred to me  
> that Ruby creates a symbol for a variable. But I guess it makes sense  
> given some code I’ve seen that uses symbols to name methods and  
> attributes and the like. assigning b = :a is like doing (setf b 'a) in  
> Lisp, b contains a symbol, not 1 or a reference to the variable a itself  
> or anything like that. What I wonder then, is what happens in Ruby if  
> you were to then call eval(b) ? I haven’t tried it.

–ch–