Question

I recently asked a question (heres the link) regarding opening a link in a new page. I found there were two answers.

:target => '_blank' 
target: "_blank"

I was hoping someone could explain the difference between single and double quotations and why both of the above work. I understand the second option is only achievable on more recent versions of rails (I’m using 3.2.2).

Answer 1

basically, this is Ruby’s hash, ( for more info, please refer to “@mu is too shot”‘s resource )

# always works (works both in Ruby 1.8 and 1.9)
:target => '_blank'    

# works in 1.9 only 
target: "_blank"

both of them can assign hash’s elements.

however the code below is incorrect.

# this is incorrect
target: = "_blank"