Ruby : `&:symbol` syntax

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Ruby/Ruby on Rails ampersand colon shortcut

Seen in Railscast #167 :

def tag_names
    @tag_names || tags.map(&:name).join(' ')
end

What is this &:name syntax, what does it do ?

I understand what a symbol is, but what other kinds of objects this & can be prepended to ?

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Duplicate question : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1961030/ruby-ruby-on-rails-ampersand-colon-shortcut

Answer 1

Its shorthand for converting a symbol to a Proc and then executing it (the Proc). This blog post covers it:

http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/2006/3/7/symbol-to-proc-shorthand