Why symbols over strings when defining method parameters?

[Bob Carologees]

Title says it all. Coming from a PHP background, hash arrays are always defined using "key" => "value" - in ruby it seems to use :key => "value". What is the advantage of this? And why is this used for method params?

Thanks in advance.

[vgarcia]

http://glu.ttono.us/articles/2005/08...g-ruby-symbols

[Luke Redpath]

Plus they look nicer

[Bob Carologees]

Thanks - all makes sense now. True as well luke lol cant believe php doesnt have this though! convention seems reasonable as well, string when content is most important - symbols when object is more important