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rubydynamic-dispatch

Dynamic dispatch in Ruby: strings vs symbols

  1. What's the difference between sending a string and sending a symbol to call a method dynamically, e.g., foo.public_send(:bar) vs foo.public_send('bar')? Is there a concrete difference in how these are handled?

  2. If symbols are better, is it worth to do foo.public_send('bar'.to_sym) if for some reason you need to construct your method name as a string?

Solution

    1. There is no difference between them, in fact, when passing a string it is converted to a symbol.

    2. No need to convert it since that same conversion (e.g. 'bar'.to_sym) will be done if a string is provided.

    From the docs:

    Invokes the method identified by symbol, passing it any arguments specified. Unlike send, #public_send calls public methods only. When the method is identified by a string, the string is converted to a symbol.