From: Kurt Stephens <kurt@...>
Date: 2008-11-23T18:11:26+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:20048] Unexpected Performance of Symbol Construction

http://kurtstephens.com/node/72

Evaluating :���foo_bar��� is 1.5 to 2.5 times faster than :foo_bar. This is
true for both Ruby 1.8.6-p287 and Ruby 1.9 trunk.  The most common means
of specifying a Symbol literal is slower than the general expression to
create a Symbol from a String constant.

# Ruby 1.9 trunk.
 > ~/local/ruby/trunk/bin/ruby symbol_benchmark.rb 
             user     system      total        real
:foo_bar		  0.180000   0.000000   0.180000 (  0.178016)
:'foo_bar'		  0.070000   0.000000   0.070000 (  0.072418)
:"foo_bar"		  0.080000   0.000000   0.080000 (  0.072390)
"foo_bar".to_sym	  0.340000   0.000000   0.340000 (  0.340502)
:"foo_#{'bar'}"	  0.060000   0.000000   0.060000 (  0.073382)
"foo_#{'bar'}".to_sym	  0.350000   0.000000   0.350000 (  0.349321)

# ruby 1.8.6
 > ruby symbol_benchmark.rb 
             user     system      total        real
:foo_bar		  0.370000   0.140000   0.510000 (  0.513998)
:'foo_bar'		  0.240000   0.090000   0.330000 (  0.331501)
:"foo_bar"		  0.270000   0.060000   0.330000 (  0.324257)
"foo_bar".to_sym	  0.480000   0.070000   0.550000 (  0.573244)
:"foo_#{'bar'}"	  0.250000   0.070000   0.320000 (  0.323314)
"foo_#{'bar'}".to_sym	  0.480000   0.080000   0.560000 (  0.566108)

symbol_benchmark.rb:

require 'benchmark'

n = 1000000

Benchmark.bm(7) { | x |
  x.report(':foo_bar' + "\t\t") {
    n.times { 
      :foo_bar
    }
  }
  x.report(":'foo_bar'" + "\t\t") {
    n.times { 
      :'foo_bar'
    }
  }
  x.report(':"foo_bar"' + "\t\t") {
    n.times { 
      :"foo_bar"
    }
  }
  x.report('"foo_bar".to_sym' + "\t") {
    n.times { 
      "foo_bar".to_sym
    }
  }
  x.report(':"foo_#{\'bar\'}"' + "\t\t") { 
    n.times { 
      :"foo_#{'bar'}"
    }
  }
  x.report('"foo_#{\'bar\'}".to_sym' + "\t") {
    n.times {
      "foo_#{'bar'}".to_sym
    }
  }
}