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> I was sad to see => aka "hashrocket" syntax go

It hasn't gone - still there as of 2.6.2 and still the only way to create non-symbol keys in a literal.

One can only ever use Symbols as keys in the 1.9 hash literal syntax, whereas complex objects responding to `#hash` can be used as keys in hash rocket literals.

> What I'm intrigued by is the author's suggestion that there's more to the change than a relatively minor syntax change.

I don't remember him saying that about hash literals. All I caught was that he doesn't like how it's limited to expressing only symbol-keyed hashes. Maybe I missed something, though.

That was exactly what I didn't pick up on, and you took for granted. I only rarely use non-symbol keys, so it hadn't dawned on me that the new syntax was, in fact, knee-capped.