Significance of colon : in Ruby
ruby
Solution
A colon denotes a "symbol". A symbol is like a string, but it is immutable (you can't change its contents). Behind the scenes, it also takes up less memory, since a symbol only needs to exist once in memory (i.e., two strings called "length" will exist twice in memory, but two symbols called :length will point to the same object).
Problem
Possible Duplicate: Understanding Symbols In Ruby What is the colon operator in Ruby? I really feel naive asking this, but I'm going to go ahead and ask : What is the importance of `:` in ruby ? I have seen it being used in a number of places like `params[:id]` or like `x < :length`.