From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2001-05-22T12:43:18+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:15520] Re: Newbie GC question

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:15512] Newbie GC question"
    on 01/05/22, Ashley Roeckelein <ashley.DONT@SPAM.getnet.ME.net> writes:

|I have a question regarding the Ruby GC and strings vs. symbols.  I'm 
|working on my first "learn Ruby" Ruby program, and have come to the option 
|of representing "data" as either strings or as symbols.  As I understand 
|it, when invoked, the GC will "clean out" any unreferenced strings that may 
|be laying around - I wonder if the GC also does this with any unreferenced 
|"interned" symbols too?  i.e. will the GC also clean out any unreferenced 
|symbols?

No.  GC does not reclaim "unreferenced" symbols (because I couldn't
define "unreferenced" status for symbols), so that symbol table never
gets smaller.

|My guess is yes, so given this assumption, is there any performance or 
|memory advantages to using symbols over strings, or vice-versa?

Use symbols, if you concern about performance and memory consumption.
They are immediate values thus being far effective.

							matz.