il Wed, 31 Mar 2004 23:23:46 +1200, "Robo" <robo / mars.com> ha
scritto::

> Symbols are like Atoms in other languages -- they are invariant, and a
>> symbol only creates a new object if it's the first time it's used.
>
>I've been wondering about symbols as well. What are some examples of a good
>place to use symbols?

when you use something related to reflection 
(method(:sym) is an example)

when you need a constant meaning something, insted of the C-like
Module::CONST
you can just use :const
:const is just like a number (immutable and so on) but it has the 
plus have being meaningful.

in general, I even believe using symbols is safer than using string.
If you are using a string and do not need it's features (take a look
at String.instance_methods ) you may think of using a symbol (even if
not everything is allowed as a symbol), avoiding possibly messing up
something by changing the string.