On 12/30/05, Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen / gmail.com> wrote:

> Personally, I don't know why people have such big
> problems with Symbol, and I'll probably not ever understand.  Just
> take them for granted and use them.

Amen!

Sorry if this has already been posted but Kevin Clark gives a good
explanation of Ruby Symbols in his article _Understanding Ruby
Symbols_

http://glu.ttono.us/articles/2005/08/19/understanding-ruby-symbols

Now i'm not sure that this has enough detail for the pedantic* but he
certainly makes the case for USING symbols.

Hope this helps shed some light, as this thread is getting painfully long.

-Greg

* seriously we should find a new word, search the archive for this
week to see what I mean!
On the lighter sides of things... I've searched for new ways to call
each other or ourselves pedantic, which hopefully the erudites among
us will pick apart :)

abstruse, academic, arid, didactic, doctrinaire, donnish, dry, dull,
egotistic, erudite, formal, fussy, hairsplitting, learned, nitpicking,
ostentatious, overnice, particular, pedagogic, pompous, precise,
priggish, punctilious, scholastic, schoolish, sententious, stilted