Names starting with ":"
 

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

drjay

Re: Names starting with ":"
 

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.

% 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

Re: Names starting with ":"
 

They are called 'symbols' in Ruby.

Re: Names starting with ":"
 

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

Class Person

  attr_reader :name, :age, :sex

end



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

The construct :name is an expression that returns a symbol corresponding to name.