From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2005-08-26T03:29:06+09:00
Subject: CoW [Was: Re: Wilderness Project]

On 24 Aug 2005, at 23:16, Charles E. Thornton wrote:

> Can someone tell me the CONCEPT behind the
> flags STR_ASSOC and ELTS_SHARED  and
> the usage of
>    union {
>    long capa;
>    VALUE shared;
>    } aux;
> in RString and RArray?
>
> What I need is a general explanation that I can
> then relate to the code.

They are for copy-on-write.

> -----------------------------------
> If possible a short Ruby Program to
> exercise these features

I don't know of any way to show that these work from Ruby itself.  I  
suppose you could make a really huge string, then grab a chunk of it  
(all but one element) and then modify the chunk and see your memory  
usage go up.

-- 
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://segment7.net
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