From: Gary Wright <gwtmp01@...>
Date: 2009-06-26T03:44:44+09:00
Subject: Re: max of an array?


On Jun 25, 2009, at 10:24 AM, George George wrote:
> what is the maximum size of elements can a ruby array hold and  
> 'process'
> comfortably for a 1GB RAM machine?


The 1GB real memory constraint doesn't really help in answering the  
question. The virtual memory size of a process can be much larger than  
the physical memory size of a machine.  The manner in which you  
process the data in a large array will greatly affect the performance  
because of the way your algorithm will interact with memory caches and  
virtual memory paging.  The amount of memory actually available to  
your process is going to depend on what other processes are running on  
the machine and so on.

Without sharing much more about your particular problem set I'm afraid  
the answer to your question is going to be 'It depends'.  The best way  
to improve on that answer is to experiment with the system in question.

Gary Wright