# What is meant here?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-is-meant-here/193364>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 16, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-is-meant-here/193364 "2010-08-16T17:48:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![swengineer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@swengineer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/swengineer)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-is-meant-here/193364/1 "2010-08-16T17:48:47Z")

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In the “Head First Rails” book, it mentions the following:

If the matching route contains symbols, then the Routing system will  
create “matching parameters” in the request parameters table params[.  
… ]…

I want to ask about matching parameters. Does that mean that if we have  
the following symbols:

:id  
:controller  
:action

So, does “create “matching parameters” in the request parameters table  
params[. …]” mean the following:

params[:id, :controller, :action]

And, one final thing. What is the “Routing system”? Is it routes.rb?

Thanks.

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**Author:** ![swengineer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@swengineer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/swengineer)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-is-meant-here/193364/2 "2010-08-16T17:52:05Z")

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I think params[…] should NOT be written as I wrote it in my question  
like this: params[:id, :controller, :action]?

It should be written as follows instead?

params[:id]  
params[:controller]  
params[:action]

?

Or, both are the same?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![swengineer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@swengineer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/swengineer)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2010, 6:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-is-meant-here/193364/3 "2010-08-16T18:02:01Z")

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On Aug 16, 4:48 pm, Abder-Rahman A. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> And, one final thing. What is the “Routing system”? Is it routes.rb?

It’s a bit more than that - routes.rb is the means by which you  
configure the routing system, which could be broadly described as the  
part of rails that dispatches incoming requests to individual  
controller actions.

Fred

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**Author:** ![swengineer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@swengineer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/swengineer)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2010, 4:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-is-meant-here/193364/4 "2010-08-22T16:27:10Z")

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Frederick C. wrote:

> On Aug 16, 4:48�pm, Abder-Rahman A. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:
> 
> > And, one final thing. What is the “Routing system”? Is it routes.rb?
> 
> It’s a bit more than that - routes.rb is the means by which you  
> configure the routing system, which could be broadly described as the  
> part of rails that dispatches incoming requests to individual  
> controller actions.
> 
> Fred

Thanks.