From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2006-02-08T08:59:28+09:00
Subject: Re: marshalling constants

Eric Hodel wrote:
> On Feb 7, 2006, at 11:38 AM, Brian Buckley wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> When one marshals a constant and later unmarshals it, a brand new object
>> appears to be created during unmarshalling.  This seems wasteful,
>> especially
>> in cases when constants are large (contain many attributes).  Is it
>> possible
>> to customize marshal for a class (or for singleton objects of the
>> class) so
>> that unmarshalling a constant simply returns the already existing
>> constant
>> rather than creating a new one?  I've noticed Fixnum's exhibit this
>> behavior.
> 
> How do you know that a Marshal string is identical to a constant without
> loading it?

In some cases, the identity is the name of the constant, not the value.
And that's something that is possible to marshal consistently.

> Note that Ruby doesn't really have constants.  Instead it has frozen
> objects which aren't quite the same thing.

I'm assuming the OP meant constant in the sense of binding, which ruby
does have.

-- 
      vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407