When I say { :bla => 1, :bloop => 2 }, what exactly does the : do? I read somewhere about how it's similar to a string, but somehow a symbol.
I'm not super-clear on the concept, could someone enlighten me?
What is the colon operator in Ruby?
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9 Answers
All these answers omit one extra tantalising detail.. if you stringify the symbol :foo, you get.. guess what.. the string "foo". Hence
irb(main):025:0>
irb(main):026:0> :foo
=> :foo
irb(main):027:0> "#{:foo}"
=> "foo"
irb(main):028:0>
irb(main):029:0> 'foo' <=> :foo
=> nil
irb(main):030:0> 'foo' <=> :foo.to_s
=> 0
irb(main):031:0>
Hence.. for Perl programmers.. it's Ruby's answer to the 'bare word'.
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