title: Hash syntax in Ruby
body: <p>According to <em>The Well Grounded Rubyist</em>: </p>
  
  <p>Ruby allows a special form of symbol representation in the hash-key position, with the colon after the symbol instead of before it and the hash separator arrow removed. In other words, this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>hash = { :name =&gt; "David", :age =&gt; 49 }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>can also be written like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>hash = { name: David, age: 49 }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have tried the preceding code in ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.2 - It is not working. What am I doing wrong?</p>