From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2005-05-02T05:09:26+09:00
Subject: Re: collections with values of fixed classes/lengths


"Eric Mahurin" <eric_mahurin@yahoo.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:20050501180414.24582.qmail@web41115.mail.yahoo.com...
> Anybody know of any collection (i.e. Array/Hash) classes where
> the keys and/or values can be assigned a fixed class?  And for
> classes that have variable length objects the length be also
> potentially fixed across the collection?  The main purpose of
> doing this would be memory usage.  You wouldn't have to store
> the class (and possibly object length and pointer to allocated
> space) per element and instead just have the raw data in the
> collection.  You would be able to get the same memory
> utilization as C per element if done right.
>
> Here would be a few examples of what I'm talking about and how
> much space per element it would take:
>
> - array of Floats (64 bits per element)
> - array of N-bit integers (N bits per element)

For numerics there is for narray:
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/narray

> - hash of 2-character strings (2*8 bits per key and Object per
> value)
> - array of array of 8 Floats (8*64 bits per line)

There's also pack and unpack which can be used to implement this.

> For dealing with large data structures, this could be
> invaluable for memory usage.

"could" or "is"?  Do you really know that you need this or is this just 
guessing?

Kind regards

    robert