title: What does "&:name" mean in Ruby
body: <p>I saw it in some sample Ruby code someone had posted. It was something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>a.sort_by(&amp;:name)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>where <code>a</code> is an array or ActiveRecord objects and <code>:name</code> is one of the attributes.</p>
  
  <p>I have never seen <code>&amp;:name</code> and Ruby's Symbol class documentation says nothing about it. Probably something really simple. :)</p>