I took a couple days’ break from the Ruby train. I had some other things I wanted to do, and darn it, I did them! I also needed some brain-recuperation time. Oh yeah, and I was finishing up the last episode (or 10…) of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan.

But now I’m back!

Day 4 of Ruby entails some tasty symbols, regular expressions, and methods.

Symbols

While I knew this going in, I’m finding more and more that Koans are a great tool for teaching how to use stuff in a language. What they are not great at, however, is explaining precisely what the “stuff” is.

Symbols are a great example of this gap. They’re scattered sneakily throughout the preceding examples, and seem easy enough to use. However, defining what a “symbol” is by virtue of the Koan itself leaves a bit to be desired.

So I did some reading. I eventually came across a nice article entitled “The Ruby_Newbie Guide to Symbols” by Steve Litt. In this article, Steve makes a helpful, birds-eye exploration of symbols in Ruby, sticking to broad categories and avoiding getting lost in the weeds of over-definition.

I’ll let you read Steve’s article for the full scoop, but my reading of symbols is More >