@parkr really? I thought the opposite was true. Strings are fat and symbols are fast. This in 1.9.3 is almost 5 times faster with symbols.

```ruby
require 'benchmark'

str = Benchmark.measure do
  10_000_000.times do
    "test"
  end
end.total

sym = Benchmark.measure do
  10_000_000.times do
    :test
  end
end.total

puts "String: " + str.to_s
puts "Symbol: " + sym.to_s
puts
```