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This post was written in 2007. It's preserved here for historical purposes — the technical details may no longer be accurate.

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2026 retrospective
Ruby 1.9 reached end-of-life in 2015. Ruby is now at 3.x, and Symbol.all_symbols no longer includes this easter egg — it was removed long ago. The answer to life, the universe, and everything remains 42.
22:33:24 vjt@voyager:~$ irb19 -f
irb(main):001:0> Symbol.all_symbols.grep /^the/
=> [:the_answer_to_life_the_universe_and_everything]

unluckily, the answer isn’t 42:

irb(main):002:0> _.first.object_id
=> 5048

:\

Thanks for this strange finding, nextie! :D