From: mame@...
Date: 2019-06-23T04:47:18+00:00
Subject: [ruby-core:93324] [Ruby trunk Feature#15504] Freeze all Range object

Issue #15504 has been updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh).


I guess @eregon came from #15950.  Will `ary[-3..]` be as efficient as `ary[-3, 3]` by freezing and deduping a literal `(-3..)`?  Looks good if we can confirm it by an experiment.

Some thoughts:

* Even if a range is frozen, `("a".."z")` should not be deduped because of the reason @marcandre said.
* I'm for freezing all Ranges, not only Range literals.  I hate the idea of freezing only literals because casually mixing frozen and unfrozen objects leads to hard-to-debug bugs that depend upon data flow.
* It would be the most elegant if the combination of MJIT and escape analysis solves this kind of performance problems.

----------------------------------------
Feature #15504: Freeze all Range object
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/15504#change-78802

* Author: ko1 (Koichi Sasada)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
* Target version: 
----------------------------------------
# Abstrcat

Range is now non-frozen. How about to freeze all of Range objects?

# Background

We freeze some type of objects, Numerics (r47523) and Symbols [Feature #8906].
I believe making objects immutable solves some kind of programming difficulties.

`Range` is mutable, at least it is written in Range literal. So we can write the following weird program. 

```
2.times{
  r = (1..3)
  p r.instance_variable_get(:@foo)
  #=> 1st time: nil
  #=> 2nd time: :bar
  r.instance_variable_set(:@foo, :bar)
}
```

in `range.c`, there is a comment (thanks znz-san):

```
static void
range_modify(VALUE range)
{
    rb_check_frozen(range);
    /* Ranges are immutable, so that they should be initialized only once. */
    if (RANGE_EXCL(range) != Qnil) {
	rb_name_err_raise("`initialize' called twice", range, ID2SYM(idInitialize));
    }
}
```

# Patch

```
Index: range.c
===================================================================
--- range.c	(��������������� 66699)
+++ range.c	(���������������)
@@ -45,6 +45,8 @@
     RANGE_SET_EXCL(range, exclude_end);
     RANGE_SET_BEG(range, beg);
     RANGE_SET_END(range, end);
+
+    rb_obj_freeze(range);
 }
 
 VALUE
```

# Discussion

There are several usage of mutable Range in tests.

* (1) taint-flag
* (2) add singleton methods.
* (3) subclass with mutable states

Maybe (2) and (3) are points.

Thanks,
Koichi



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