From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2005-07-22T04:57:45+09:00
Subject: Re: C extension makes things slower

Joe Van Dyk wrote:

> Wow, neat.  Does Data_Get_Struct extract out members of a Ruby object
> and assign them to corresponding members of a C struct?
> 

No. Ruby instance vars are stored separately from the C struct belonging
to a T_DATA object. In fact, in the case of T_DATA (and also T_ARRAY,
T_PROC, etc.), instance variables are stored in a big global hash,
indexed first by object id then by ivar name, IIRC. In the case of
T_OBJECT (an instance of a normal user-defined ruby class) the ivars are
stored ina hash in the object itself.

When you allocate a T_DATA with the Data_Make_Struct (or
Data_Wrap_Struct) macro, you also allocate (or pass in) a pointer to
your own struct. The Data_Get_Struct macro, given a T_DATA, merely gives
you back this pointer.

The README.EXT in the ruby source covers this stuff if you want more detail.