From: Dick Davies <rasputnik@...>
Date: 2006-06-06T18:40:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Speed of Ruby program != Speed of Ruby language (was Re: Zed and Luis drop the bomb on Ruby's poor performance)

On 03/06/06, Phil Jackson <phil@shellarchive.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 07:56:10 +0900, Dave Howell wrote:

> > The String class is not only nothing like a C string, it's not a string at
> > all, in the sense that any/all other languages I've met use the term.
>
> This is the point you should just let this one go I think. Ruby is written
> in C and the String object wraps one of these (as defined in ruby.h):
>
>     struct RString {
>         struct RBasic basic;
>         long len;
>         char *ptr;
>         union {
>             long capa;
>             VALUE shared;
>         } aux;
>     };
>
> What this boils down to is that a Ruby String *is* a C string with fancy
> clothes on.

That's the implementation. By that argument a Java XXX is just a C struct,
because the JVM is written in C (actually C++, I think).

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