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Re:Objective-C, Ruby and Python for Cocoa by look_lookatme on Sunday January 11, 2009 @07:28PM (#429885)
This is not a special syntax. It's just ruby 1.9 specific hash literal syntax.
Re:Objective-C, Ruby and Python for Cocoa by jimbokun on Sunday January 11, 2009 @10:35PM (#430037)
But it looks like the important thing is that they have found a way to automatically map this syntax to Objective C method names.

EDIT: Or, as the MacRuby docs put it:

"MacRuby has a modified version of the parser which detects calls or method definitions using one regular argument, and other arguments using the key/value pair syntax. It will reconstruct the Objective-C full selector if needed. The method name that will be used in the Ruby VM is the same as the Objective-C selector."

http://www.macruby.org/trac/wiki/HowDoesMacRubyWork