From: daniel@...42.com Date: 2020-08-24T03:13:25+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:99676] [Ruby master Feature#16986] Anonymous Struct literal Issue #16986 has been updated by Dan0042 (Daniel DeLorme). > I thought that this would be a useful substitute of symbol-key Hash (like JSON data) which we can read the values by `s.name` instead of `s[:name]`. This is the same thing stated in the Feature proposal, and I would also like this, and it seems a lot of other people here too. So even if the solution is not exactly an Anonymous Struct literal let's find a way to be able to write this kind of nice-looking `s.name` code. > Because method-name symbols are never GC'ed, so converting arbitrary external input to anonymous Struct is vulnerable against Symbol DoS. It should be possible to work around this. Let say we create an anonymous struct with `Struct(**json)`, instead of creating an actual `Struct.new` it could be something like `AnonStruct.new` where only _already-existing_ method-name symbols are created as methods, and the other keys are handled via method_missing. > It creates a struct class for all unique set of keys. Assuming that the struct class can be garbage-collected when there are no longer any instances, I think this should not be a big problem? ---------------------------------------- Feature #16986: Anonymous Struct literal https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/16986#change-87163 * Author: ko1 (Koichi Sasada) * Status: Open * Priority: Normal * Assignee: matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) ---------------------------------------- # Abstract How about introducing anonymous Struct literal such as `${a: 1, b: 2}`? It is almost the same as `Struct.new(:a, :b).new(1, 2)`. # Proposal ## Background In many cases, people use hash objects to represent a set of values such as `person = {name: "ko1", country: 'Japan'}` and access its values through `person[:name]` and so on. It is not easy to write (three characters `[:]`!), and it easily introduces misspelling (`person[:nama]` doesn't raise an error). If we make a `Struct` object by doing `Person = Struct.new(:name, :age)` and `person = Person.new('ko1', 'Japan')`, we can access its values through `person.name` naturally. However, it costs coding. And in some cases, we don't want to name the class (such as `Person`). Using `OpenStruct` (`person = OpenStruct.new(name: "ko1", country: "Japan")`), we can access it through `person.name`, but we can extend the fields unintentionally, and the performance is not good. Of course, we can define a class `Person` with attr_readers. But it takes several lines. To summarize the needs: * Easy to write * Doesn't require declaring the class * Accessible through `person.name` format * Limited fields * Better performance ## Idea Introduce new literal syntax for an anonymous Struct such as: `${ a: 1, b: 2 }`. Similar to Hash syntax (with labels), but with `$` prefix to distinguish. Anonymous structs which have the same member in the same order share their class. ```ruby s1 = ${a: 1, b: 2, c: 3} s2 = ${a: 1, b: 2, c: 3} assert s1 == s2 s3 = ${a: 1, c: 3, b: 2} s4 = ${d: 4} assert_equal false, s1 == s3 assert_equal false, s1 == s4 ``` ## Note Unlike Hash literal syntax, this proposal only allows `label: expr` notation. No `${**h}` syntax. This is because if we allow to splat a Hash, it can be a vulnerability by splatting outer-input Hash. Thanks to this spec, we can specify anonymous Struct classes at compile time. We don't need to find or create Struct classes at runtime. ## Implementatation https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/3259 # Discussion ## Notation Matz said he thought about `{|a: 1, b: 2 |}` syntax. ## Performance Surprisingly, Hash is fast and Struct is slow. ```ruby Benchmark.driver do |r| r.prelude <<~PRELUDE st = Struct.new(:a, :b).new(1, 2) hs = {a: 1, b: 2} class C attr_reader :a, :b def initialize() = (@a = 1; @b = 2) end ob = C.new PRELUDE r.report "ob.a" r.report "hs[:a]" r.report "st.a" end __END__ Warming up -------------------------------------- ob.a 38.100M i/s - 38.142M times in 1.001101s (26.25ns/i, 76clocks/i) hs[:a] 37.845M i/s - 38.037M times in 1.005051s (26.42ns/i, 76clocks/i) st.a 33.348M i/s - 33.612M times in 1.007904s (29.99ns/i, 87clocks/i) Calculating ------------------------------------- ob.a 87.917M i/s - 114.300M times in 1.300085s (11.37ns/i, 33clocks/i) hs[:a] 85.504M i/s - 113.536M times in 1.327850s (11.70ns/i, 33clocks/i) st.a 61.337M i/s - 100.045M times in 1.631064s (16.30ns/i, 47clocks/i) Comparison: ob.a: 87917391.4 i/s hs[:a]: 85503703.6 i/s - 1.03x slower st.a: 61337463.3 i/s - 1.43x slower ``` I believe we can speed up `Struct` similarly to ivar accesses, so we can improve the performance. BTW, OpenStruct (os.a) is slow. ``` Comparison: hs[:a]: 92835317.7 i/s ob.a: 85865849.5 i/s - 1.08x slower st.a: 53480417.5 i/s - 1.74x slower os.a: 12541267.7 i/s - 7.40x slower ``` For memory consumption, `Struct` is more lightweight because we don't need to keep the key names. ## Naming If we name an anonymous class, literals with the same members share the name. ```ruby s1 = ${a:1} s2 = ${a:2} p [s1, s2] #=> [#, #] A = s1.class p [s1, s2] #=> [#, #] ``` Maybe that is not a good behavior. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/ Unsubscribe: