On Saturday 12 May 2007 07:20, enduro wrote: > Hello, > > I was exited when I heard that > Symbol was made a subclass of String > in Ruby 1.9, September last year. > > But then I heard that the experiment > was stopped after only two months. > > And recently I have started to think about this > topic again and I've tried to collect the reasons > why the idea was not pursued any longer. > > I have not been very lucky searching the net > for that, that's why I am asking you: > > Could someone give me a summary of the reasons > why the approach to make Symbol a subclass of String > is not considered for future Ruby versions anymore? > Or point me towards some information explaining that? > > Thank you very much > > Sven basic reason - as stated in ruby hacking guide is that Symbol internally is just Int ! that makes hash based on symbols much much faster, as a consequence of above Symbol is "read-only" and you can modify String as much as you want. so to sum up - Symbols are smaller, faster, but "read-only", good for indexing hashes - passing methods names etc. Strings - heavy, slow, but with greater flexability, if you want more in deep explenations read ruby internals/hacking guide -- Marcin Raczkowski --- Friends teach what you should know Enemies Teach what you have to know