CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby
Hommer Smith
Hommer Smith

Reputation: 27852

Why one would use a symbol in attr_accessor and not a string?

So why would we do this in Ruby:

attr_accessor :price

Instead of:

attr_accessor 'price'

I have read that Symbols are similar to Strings, but they are immutable. But I fail to see why would we use that when doing attr_accessor, attr_reader. I mean, what are the advantages?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 792

Answers (3)

Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag

Reputation: 369556

It's just the right thing to do. Symbol is a data type whose purpose is specifically to represent the concept of a "name" or "label". Here, you are using it to pass the name of a pair of methods to generate. Symbol is just the correct data type in this case. The methods also take Strings for convenience reasons.

Upvotes: 3

Pete
Pete

Reputation: 11495

Symbols are interned, unlike strings, so you avoid creating a ton of (potentially) duplicate string objects. Using the same :foo symbol in several places does not consume more memory at a constant rate, unless doing the same with 'foo'

Upvotes: 1

MxLDevs
MxLDevs

Reputation: 19546

Preference. Symbols require less effort to type and some IDE's highlight them with pretty colors.

Upvotes: 0

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