From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2008-11-11T06:30:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Look up objects by object_id

exiquio wrote:
> So ruby objects have an object_id. What is the intended purpose of
> these unique identifiers? Is their a method that allows one to
> retrieve a object by object_id? Thanks in advanced.

The object_id is an encoded version of the object reference and class. 
For certain classes (e.g. Fixnum) you can decode the actual value. For 
other classes it encodes the memory address where the object data 
structure can be found.

If two object references have the same object_id, then they are the same 
object.

As for retrieving by object_id, see ObjectSpace._id2ref(ref). There are 
practical examples in drb/drb.rb and weakref.rb in the standard library 
that you can look at.
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