What's the difference between a string and a symbol in Ruby?

Question

What\'s the difference between a string and a symbol in Ruby and when should I use one over the other?

Answer 1

What are the differences between Symbols and Strings?

1. Symbols are immutable: Their value remains constant.
2. Multiple uses of the same symbol have the same object ID and are the same object compared to string which will be a different object with unique object ID, everytime.
3. You can't call any of the String methods like split on Symbols.

From Understanding Differences Between Symbols & Strings in Ruby

If you know Chinese, you can also read 理解 Ruby Symbol.