From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2001-06-22T15:44:44+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:16749] Re: Symbols, and their use as hash keys

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:16748] Symbols, and their use as hash keys"
    on 01/06/22, "Aristarkh A Zagorodnikov" <xm@w3d.ru> writes:

|	May anyone enlighten me with knowledge of how symbol integer value
|(Symbol#to_i) is generated ?

You're not suppose to understand that. ;-)

But if you really want to know the hidden magic, you can read
rb_intern() int parse.y and ID2SYM() in ruby.h

|	Also, I'm interested why using it as a hash key is about 5-8 times slower
|then string of the same size ?

Symbols are immediate numbers.  We can compare them in one machine
operation, instead of byte by byte comparison like strings.

							matz.