Austin Ziegler wrote: > Probably an implementation detail. That doesn't mean you can't ignore > it, but it means that it's generally a good idea to use Symbols in a > lot of places. Just don't pretend that they're immutable Strings. > They're not. If you want that, freeze the String. > I think the big difference is if you want to use symbols for values that come from external sources for long-running processes like servers. If symbols are garbage collected in Ruby 2, the answer is yes, you could use them in all the places that you'd use interned strings in Java or symbols in lisp. If not, the answer is no, then you probably only want to use symbols on values that the author of the program is totally in control of; or in short lived processes.