Question

I am working my way through Head First Rails, and I keep seeing =>. It’s in the routes:

map.connect '/marmots/new', controller=>'marmots', :action=>'new'

It’s in rendering partials:

render :partial=>"new_marmot"

It’s in options for links:

<%= link_to 'Destroy', marmot, :confirm=>'Are you sure?', :method=>:delete %>

Basically, => seems to mean ‘equals,’ but if so, why not just use an equals sign? Is it more like ‘send to?’

How do you pronounce => and what do you understand it to mean? I can get by without knowing this, but it bugs me.

Answer 1

Your first function call is a shortcut for

map.connect('/marmots/new', {:controller=>'marmots', :action=>'new'})

where the {} are a Hash-literal. The second argument of the method connect of the object map is an object of class Hash with the two keys :controller and :action (both are literals of the class Symbol) whose corresponding values are the two strings ‘marmots’ and ‘new’.

EDIT: I call it “arrow” or “maps to”.