What does map(&:name) mean in Ruby?

Question

I found this code in a RailsCast:

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

What does the (&:name)

Answer 1

Although we have great answers already, looking through a perspective of a beginner I'd like to add the additional information:

What does map(&:name) mean in Ruby?

This means, that you are passing another method as parameter to the map function. (In reality you're passing a symbol that gets converted into a proc. But this isn't that important in this particular case).

What is important is that you have a method named name that will be used by the map method as an argument instead of the traditional block style.