:Symbols in Ruby

One thing that kept bugging me when I started using RoR (Ruby on Rails) was the expressions preceded by a colon (:id, :link). After little googling I found out these are called Symbols and it's does mainly save space by acting as an identifier for a set of strings that has to be used on several times in a code (There are other usages such as defining a method name). 

 

Definition for symbols in the book Programming Ruby,

A Ruby symbol is the internal representation of a name. You construct the symbol for a name by preceding the name with a colon. A particular name will always generate the same symbol, regardless of how that name is used within the program.

 

Also in the blog Gluttonous I found some good explanations and usages of these symbols.

 

So :Symbols is no longer a queer, afterall it's a helper.