Ruby Symbols (Colon Variables)
tl;dr
A ruby symbol is like an Enum constant in Java or C++.
Symbols are immutable. Their value remains constant during the entirety of the program. They never appear on the left side of an assignment. You'll never see this:
:myname = "steve" # Symbols ARE used like this: mystring = :steveT mystring = :steveT.to_s myint = :steveT.to_i class Example attr_reader :steveT end
More info
Colon variable refers to :abc type variables you might have seen in Ruby.
They are called Ruby symbols.
- A Ruby symbol is not a variable because it cannot be assigned a value.
- It is not a reference to another variable nor is it a pointer to a memory location.
- Has a value and whenever the name of the symbol is same, its value is the same.
# It is trivial to assign a value to a variable. abc = "1" => "1" # But a symbol cannot be assigned any value. :a = "1" # SyntaxError: A symbol cannot be assigned a value # Can use a variable as a map-key (You know already) m = {abc => "1"} => {"1"=>"1"} # Can use a string as a map-key (You know already) m = {"def" => "1"} => {"def"=>"1"} # Can also use a symbol as a map-key (Most common use case) m = {:a => "1"} => {:a=>"1"} # Can use same symbol as key in another map m2 = {:a => "2"} => {:a=>"2"} # And it won't affect the previous map. m => {:a=>"1"} m2 => {:a=>"2"}