What's up with symbols?

Hello fellows!

I’m trying to understand symbols. Not what they are, but rather why Ruby
has them. They are neat and I use them, but effectively you end up with
the same thing using plain strings, right? So why extend the language? I
get the feeling I’m missing a big point so please help me out by
pointing it out to me.

Best regards

Hans-Eric Grönlund

On Apr 3, 2006, at 3:06 PM, Hans-Eric Grönlund wrote:

I’m trying to understand symbols. Not what they are, but rather why
Ruby
has them. They are neat and I use them, but effectively you end up
with
the same thing using plain strings, right? So why extend the
language? I
get the feeling I’m missing a big point so please help me out by
pointing it out to me.

Hi,

See:

SymbolsAreNotImmutableStrings.red
[2]: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/search?
group=comp.lang.ruby&q=symbols&qt_g=1&searchnow=Search+this+group

– Daniel

Hans-Eric Grönlund wrote:

Hello fellows!

I’m trying to understand symbols. Not what they are, but rather why Ruby
has them. They are neat and I use them, but effectively you end up with
the same thing using plain strings, right?

No. There was a lengthy thread about Symbols here on ruby-talk not too
long ago, so perhaps you’ll want to search the archives.

So why extend the language? I
get the feeling I’m missing a big point so please help me out by
pointing it out to me.

See also


James B.

“A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.”

  • A. Perlis

Daniel H. wrote:

– Daniel
Is there somewhere besides the newsgroup for this?