From: "Simon Kröger" <SimonKroeger@...>
Date: 2006-05-23T05:12:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Zed and Luis drop the bomb on Ruby's poor performance

Hi Sam!
                          user     system      total        real
> noop                  0.700000   0.000000   0.700000 (  0.698633)
> String#==             2.410000   0.010000   2.420000 (  2.445288)
> String#casecmp        2.650000   0.000000   2.650000 (  2.652620)
> Symbol#==             2.280000   0.000000   2.280000 (  2.274505)
> String#to_sym         2.460000   0.000000   2.460000 (  2.449362)
> String#up             4.730000   0.000000   4.730000 (  4.721140)
> String#up#to_sym      6.030000   0.000000   6.030000 (  5.986897)

[...]
  x.report("Fixnum#==")  do
    $N.times do
      0 == 1
    end
  end
[...]
  x.report("String#up!")  do
    $N.times do
      str1.upcase!
    end
  end
[...]

                          user     system      total        real
noop                  0.157000   0.000000   0.157000 (  0.156000)
Fixnum#==             0.390000   0.000000   0.390000 (  0.391000)
String#==             0.438000   0.000000   0.438000 (  0.437000)
String#casecmp        0.578000   0.000000   0.578000 (  0.594000)
Symbol#==             0.390000   0.000000   0.390000 (  0.390000)
String#to_sym         0.563000   0.015000   0.578000 (  0.579000)
String#up             1.437000   0.016000   1.453000 (  1.484000)
String#up!            0.532000   0.000000   0.532000 (  0.531000)
String#up#to_sym      1.890000   0.000000   1.890000 (  1.922000)


Well i think in this trivial cases the problem isn't the string
compare or whatever C algorithm is called - the problem is the call
itself. (two trivial fixnum compares are already more expensive
than a single String compare)

String#upcase constructs a new object (using the bang method is
way faster)

Conclusion: method calls in general and object creation are the
bottlenecks in this (very, very) simple cases.

cheers

Simon