From: Nikolai Weibull <mailing-lists.ruby-core@...>
Date: 2005-10-31T07:46:54+09:00
Subject: Re: characters (and small strings) in ruby 2.0

Eric Mahurin wrote:

> In ruby 2.0, the current plan is to for a character to be represented
> as a String instead of an Integer. I'm writing a parser/lexer and I
> think not representing characters as immediate objects could be a
> significant performance penalty. Could I suggest something? How about
> a character be represented as frozen/immutable string and give very
> small (maybe up to 3 8-bit chars for 32-bit and 7 8-bit chars for
> 64-bit) immutable/frozen strings an immediate class (like a small
> Integer is a Fixnum)? So for most character encodings any character
> could be an immediate, but when necessary a normal String-like (frozen
> or immutable) object is used to encode the character (like Bignum's
> are used when you go over the Fixnum limit).

So you want to have flyweights for character strings.  It sounds as if
your suggestion would be a lot easier to realize if all strings in ruby
were immutable.  Still, I kind of like this idea, but I have no idea if
it���s feasible or if it���s even a good solution.

        nikolai

-- 
Nikolai Weibull: now available free of charge at http://bitwi.se/!
Born in Chicago, IL USA; currently residing in Gothenburg, Sweden.
main(){printf(&linux["\021%six\012\0"],(linux)["have"]+"fun"-97);}