From: Eric Mahurin <eric.mahurin@...>
Date: 2006-07-31T12:57:16+09:00
Subject: bypassing method lookup/call overhead

From performance testing that I've looked at with a C extension, it
looks like the overhead of method lookup and calling (rb_funcall) is a
major bottleneck.  Is there an accepted way to precalculate the final
C function pointer (or something close to it) and use this when you
are dealing with a constant variable or even variable with a constant
class?  Looking in eval.c, it looks like method_call would do a
partial job of this (at least bypassing the method lookup) using a
Method object.  Unfortunately, this isn't made available in ruby.h.

Even better would be a way to do this in ruby.  I tried two possibilities:

a. Use #method to look up the method and #call it later.  Possibly
useful for constant variables.

b. Use #method, convert it to a block with unary &, and have another
method yield to it.  Only useful if to speed up one method call of a
constant variable.

Unfotunately, both of these were slower.  The block/yield experiment
was several times slower.  Based on the fact that a block is much
closer to a function pointer (not a full Proc object), I would have
hoped this would be faster.  I guess converting the method to a block
wasn't much different than #call'ing the method from a separate block.

Any better ideas?