From: Sean O'Halpin <sean.ohalpin@...>
Date: 2006-07-01T20:53:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Symbol#to_proc is just so beautiful

Hi,

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but this technique is fairly
inefficient compared to using normal blocks.

Consider this:

class Symbol
  def to_proc
    proc{|obj| obj.send(self) }
  end
end

class Numeric
  def positive?
    self > 0
  end
end

def symbol_to_proc
  (1..1000).all? &:positive?
end
def use_block
  (1..1000).all? {|x| x.positive?}
end

require 'benchmark'
include Benchmark

n = 1000
bm(20) {|x|
  x.report("symbol_to_proc") { n.times { symbol_to_proc }}
  x.report("use_block") { n.times { use_block }}
  }
__END__
                          user     system      total        real
symbol_to_proc        2.031000   0.000000   2.031000 (  2.063000)
use_block             1.219000   0.000000   1.219000 (  1.266000)

Of course, that may change if Symbol#to_proc makes it into core.

Regards,
Sean