Question

I was reading some examples on symbols in ruby, and one example was using a symbol to represent a state name, for example :Montana

However, coming from Java, I would typically use enums here. What I like about enums is that you can group them, so I can do something like:

enum States {
Montana, Minnesota, …
}

And then in the Java code I can call

States.Montana

Is there a logical way to group related symbols in ruby? Would it make sense to create a module containing the symbols? Or is there a more idiomatic way to do this in ruby?

Answer 1

You would probably want to use modules for this.

module States
    MN = "Minnesota"
    WI = "Wisconsin"
end

puts States::MN #=> "Minnesota"

On a side note, “symbol” in Ruby usually refers to the Symbol class which is sort of like an interned string. You write a symbol like :my_symbol. They are often used as keys in HashMaps*.

*Should be Hash not HashMap.