From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2004-08-26T18:00:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby interpreter as client-server

Hi,

> I thing forking creates new interpreter instance, so this is not what I
> want (why do not run normal /usr/bin/ruby then?).
> I don't need client-server for something like RPC but I need less memory
> usage (run only one instance and scripts in it's threads).

fork() is optimized, though.  It's a standard Unix idiom for spawning
child server proceses from the parent.  It uses copy-on-write memory
management so the parent's memory space doesn't have to be
duplicated for the child.  They share the "same" memory pages
until such time as the parent or child modifies a page, at which point
a private/unique copy of that page is made for the modifying 
process; so the parent and child really are separate semantically,
but in a very efficient way.

So forking is much more efficient, both in speed and memory usage,
than running a separate /usr/bin/ruby.

You could try a quick test and see how many times you can fork()
in a second.... Should be a lot.


Hope this helps,

Regards,

Bill