Wrapping Up
In this chapter we have looked at symbols and saw that they exist purely to stand for something in your code. Symbols and garden variety strings have a lot in common—both are mostly just a stretch of characters. Unlike strings, symbols are specially tuned to their "stands for" purpose: Symbols are both unique—there can only ever be one :all symbol in your Ruby interpreter—and immutable, so that :all will never change. The good news is that once you understand that symbols and strings are like two siblings—related, but with different talents—you will be able to take advantage of the things that each does best.