On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 10:42:33AM +0900, Eero Saynatkari wrote:
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> On 2005.12.30 09:36, Chad Perrin <perrin / apotheon.com> wrote:
> > 
> > It's not really true, though, considering what a symbol is (according to
> > my current understanding).  A symbol is an element of a hash table that
> > is often used as a name, and it is an (anonymous? not sure how to
> > qualify that) object.  Calling it a "name" seems to be confusing common
> > use with actual nature, or premature explanation of an abstract way of
> > thinking about it, depending on how you mean "it is a name" when you say
> > it.  Either way, it seems to be getting the cart before the horse.
> 
> Nope, Symbols have nothing to do with Hashes. They are often used
> as Hash keys because they are descriptive: h[:foo] is better than 
> h[1] if one wants to convey some meaning with the key. In other 
> languages, you might use a string instead of a Symbol (and you
> can, of course, do so in ruby as well: h['foo']).

Apparently, a more significant distinction needs to be made between a
"hash table" in the symbol sense of the term and a "hash" in the sense
of an associative array.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]

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