From: "danh337 (Dan H)" Date: 2022-02-21T20:55:26+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:107700] [Ruby master Feature#18595] Alias `String#-@` as `String#dedup` Issue #18595 has been updated by danh337 (Dan H). byroot (Jean Boussier) wrote in #note-11: > > So if -"blah" does do interning > > Quick sidenote, it's best not to use string literals for examples of this feature, because they behave a bit differently in this context. No worries. That was my example because this ticket is to give it a name. As in `-"blah"` will truly be equivalent to `"blah".dedup`. If that's not the case then this is still too subtle and many Ruby devs are gonna need help with it. > > it seems worth the cost to do the intern > > The only point of interning is to reduce the memory footprint of the app, so it's only worth doing it for data that is "constant". You may want to freeze a string to safely pass it around even though you know it won't survive the current request cycle or whatever your unit of work is. Ok. It sounds like you're saying this is bad: ``` CONSTANT_A = "bing".freeze CONSTANT_B = "bing".freeze CONSTANT_C = "bang".freeze ``` Because the first 2 constants actually create 2 objects instead of the single equivalent interned object. And it becomes good if I change those `.freeze` calls to either `.-@` or `.dedup`, because that memory on the 2nd constant is saved. And all Ruby devs should use `.freeze` when: (a) we want it to run faster, and (b) we don't care about possible extra memory usage. If that is a fair picture then it might finally make sense to me. And incidentally, if that's a fair picture, in my own code I probably would almost never use `.freeze` any more. (Again, I have been operating for a long time thinking that `.freeze` on Strings already did interning.) ---------------------------------------- Feature #18595: Alias `String#-@` as `String#dedup` https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18595#change-96617 * Author: byroot (Jean Boussier) * Status: Open * Priority: Normal ---------------------------------------- This is a rescoped feature request for https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/16295 ### Rationale [Unary operator have some precedence oddities](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/16150#note-39) (@headius) This often force to use parentheses, which is awkward and breaks the chaining flow. It's really not obvious what it does. I submitted many pull requests to various open source projects to reduce their memory footprint, and I am constantly asked what it does and I have to point to the `String#-@` documentation. [The last example was 3 days ago](https://github.com/dry-rb/dry-schema/pull/399#issuecomment-1043963073). I believe that `String#dedup` would help users discover this feature, and in projects where 3.2 is the oldest supported version, it would allow for much clearer code. ### Proposal It's all in the title: Alias `String#-@` as `String#dedup`. Or maybe even rename `String#-@` as `String#dedup`, and make `String#-@` the alias? -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/ Unsubscribe: