Ruby

Names starting with ":"

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Join Date: Nov 2008

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drjay1627

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Names starting with ":"

Jun 4th, 2009

What are names starting with the ":", are they variables, constants or something else?

drjay

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pty

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Re: Names starting with ":"

Jun 5th, 2009

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Originally Posted by drjay1627

What are names starting with the ":", are they variables, constants or something else?

drjay

In ruby if you don't know what class an object is you can use it's class method and the docs to find out.

 Help with Code Tags 
 ruby Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
% irb --simple-prompt
>> a = :something
=> :something
>> a.class
=> Symbol
% irb --simple-prompt
>> a = :something
=> :something
>> a.class
=> Symbol

Then look it up in the docs: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Symbol.html

Last edited by pty; Jun 5th, 2009 at 4:00 pm.

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~s.o.s~

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Re: Names starting with ":"

Jun 12th, 2009

They are called 'symbols' in Ruby.

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Kevin_poison Kevin_poison is offline

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Re: Names starting with ":"

Jul 23rd, 2009

names starting with ":" are expressions that return a symbol object e.g.

 Help with Code Tags 
 Ruby Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
Class Person
  attr_reader :name, :age, :sex
end
 
me = Person.new("poison", "24", "male")
Class Person
  attr_reader :name, :age, :sex
end

me = Person.new("poison", "24", "male")