# What is a Symbol in Julia

**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-is-a-symbol-in-julia/117636
**Category:** New to Julia
**Tags:** question
**Created:** [July 30, 2024, 3:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-is-a-symbol-in-julia/117636 "2024-07-30T15:25:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Farouk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f17d59/32.png) [@Farouk](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Farouk)
#### Post date: [July 30, 2024, 3:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-is-a-symbol-in-julia/117636/1 "2024-07-30T15:25:19Z")

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Hello, I am new to Julia (with no CS background) I have experience in python programming and a bit of other languages like:C, JAVA, R. I really do not understand what a symbol is 🙃, I know it is used in labels and other stuff but I still couldn’t capture the essence of it.  
Like a variable is analogous to a label for a memory place that a value is stored in. Are symbols like variables they point to a given memory address ? 🤔 Or are they like a datatype such as float, int, etc… 🔍 I don’t know why, but this notion of symbols is confusing me, I understood its usage as labels in various data structures but besides that I cannot understand what is doing or how it behaves internally.

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### Author: ![nilshg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/nilshg/32/2283_2.png) [@nilshg](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nilshg)
#### Post date: [July 30, 2024, 3:27pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-is-a-symbol-in-julia/117636/2 "2024-07-30T15:27:10Z")

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> <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23480722/what-is-a-symbol-in-julia/23482257#23482257>

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### Author: ![DNF](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dnf/32/10191_2.png) [@DNF](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/DNF)
#### Post date: [July 30, 2024, 4:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-is-a-symbol-in-julia/117636/3 "2024-07-30T16:10:31Z")

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> [@Farouk](#):
>
> Like a variable is analogous to a label for a memory place that a value is stored in.

This is a bit inaccurate. A variable is a label for a value, and that value can point to a memory location, but it can also be ‘just’ a value which isn’t necessarily stored in memory, like eg. `x = 1.0`.

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### Author: ![Andre\_G](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/andre_g/32/211226_2.png) [@Andre\_G](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Andre_G)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2024, 3:05pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-is-a-symbol-in-julia/117636/4 "2024-08-25T15:05:35Z")

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