5 ms·

Ruby always had immutable (frozen) strings, so no, this never was a reason for Symbols existence.

• dragonwriter 10mo ago
  They aren't interned frozen strings (unless they were symbols; String#intern was, and still is, an alias for String#to_sym, and String#freeze did not and does not imply String#intern or String#to_sym), and it also (even for literals) took an extra step to either freeze or intern them prior to Ruby 2.3 introducing the "# frozen_string_literal: true" file-level option (and Ruby 3.4 making it unnecessary because it is on by default.) Amusingly, string literals interned by default in 3.4 or because of the setting in earlier >2.3 Rubies are still (despite being interned) Strings, while Strings interned with String#intern are Symbols.
  • byroot 10mo ago
    > They aren't interned frozen strings Doesn't matter. The parent claim was: > You'd just have a broken VM if you used mutable strings for metaprogramming in Ruby From day one it was possible to freeze strings used in metaprograming. I mean Ruby Hashes do that to strings keys. > Ruby 3.4 making it unnecessary because it is on by default. That's incorrect: https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/10/28/string-literals.html https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/10/28/string-...