From: Robert Dober <robert.dober@...>
Date: 2008-02-12T06:01:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Hash keys

On Feb 11, 2008 9:51 PM, Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/11/08, J. Cooper <nefigah@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I ran into something I hadn't realized (common occurrence). Keying a
> > hash with a symbol is not the same as using a string. I guess it makes
> > sense, but I've seen it done both ways, and I had been always using
> > symbols for my keys. But then I ran into an issue on loading an external
> > YAML object into a hash, and didn't realize it was keyed with strings so
> > I got errors the first time around.
> >
> > So two questions:
> > 1) What is the preferred method of keying hashes? Symbols, strings,
> > other?
>
>    Symbol keys
>          +    :a is one less keystroke than "a"
>          +? performance of Hash with symbol keys MIGHT be slightly
> faster, but probably insignificant.
>          -    More symbols get interned which can't get garbage
> collected, even after the hash is.
Hmm very interesting but is this not rather an implementation choice?
Which does not make the information less valuable of course, just
curious?

Cheers
Robert