Quoting robertj <robert_kuzelj / yahoo.com>:

> hi,
>
> is there a String#to_sym method anywhere in the
> statndard lib? i couldnt find anything like that
> but maybe i missed it.

If you've got a reasonably recent version of Ruby, yes.  I don't
know about 1.6 or earlier.

> its easy enough to write
>
> class String
>     def to_sym
>         eval ":#{self}"
>     end
> end

If you had to write one yourself, you'd want:

class String
  alias to_sym intern
end

eval'ing ":#{self}" won't work if the string has spaces or anything
like that.  In general, eval'ing strings should be an absolute last
resort in code, because it is very difficult to make reliable.

-mental