The Ruby Programming language has two different ways by which you can represent strings in your programs:
- String
- Symbol
- what is a symbol?
- The main differences between symbol & string?
- When to use symbol instead of string?
What is a symbol?
A symbol is a string which is prefixed colon at starting. In other words, if you take ruby string such as “gaurish”, ‘gaurish sharma’ or “gaurish-sharma” & prefix a colon(‘:’) at te start, you get a symbol. here is can example.
Two ways to do the essentially the same thing. Why?
Yes, you guessed it right. Strings & Symbols are essentially the thing. so why have two diffident “types” to represent string? The reason is how strings are implemented in ruby.
In Ruby, Everything is a Object including Strings
Due to SmallTalk influence, Ruby is fully object oriented language & there are no primitive types. Everything is implemented as Objects. so, when ever you try to assigned a string value to an variable like this x = “foo”, you are creating a new object in memory. Here is an small program which allocates same string to a variable 1,000 times & prints object_id of each string
As you may notice from terminal output of this program/script that each string has different object_id. ruby does creates a new object in memory every single time even thought the string is the same.
Wonder, if there is a another way?
How can I have strings which create object in memory once & all later operations refer to that previously created object with same object_id?
Glad: you asked. Enter Symbols! here is the same program with symbols.
In contrast with string, Notice how object_id is same for symbols which means its the same symbol.
What are the differences between Symbols & Strings?
- Symbols are immutable: Their value remains constant.
- Multiple uses of the same symbol have the same object ID and are the same object compared to string which will be a different object with unique object ID, everytime.
- You can’t call any of the String methods like #upcase, #split on Symbols.
When to use symbol instead of string?
Symbols generally have performance benefits. so will see their usage almost everywhere including getters & setters in classes, hash keys etc. here is few examples
#you will NEVER see this class Foo attr_reader "name" end # Instead, you will ALWAYS see a symbol class Foo attr_reader :name end #same thing but symbols are faster than strings
to use strings when:
- you want to use any of string methods like #upcase, #split, #downcase etc.
- you want to change/mutate the string
to use Symbols when:
- symbols can’t be changed at runtime. If you need something that absolutely, positively must remain constant
- Places where same string is going to be repeatably used, example hash keys are pretty good candidate for symbols. so instead of string keys, hash["key"] = value. you should use symbols like this hash[:key] = value
To conclude, strings & symbols in ruby are similar but differences given above. But the main difference is that symbols are immutable & slightly more performant than strings so you should you them place where you know same string is likely to be repeated again & again.
Actually, It is a simple concept which any kid can understand. It works like this: