From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2009-07-14T04:26:51+09:00
Subject: Re: Performance question

Pito Salas wrote:
> I have a scenario where I will be storing thousands of objects in an
> array. Each one will have, say, two attributes, name and age. Some of
> them may have other attributes in addition.
> 
> Note: I don't need to have any methods, inheritance or any other
> 'class-ish' behavior. Just the data.
> 
> Here are three representations. Which one will be faster? Which one will
> be smaller?

Probably the hash representation, but what about an array of

  [ [name, age], ...]

Can't beat that for fast access, and storing a fixnum (age) in an array 
is particularly space-efficient (only 4 bytes for this field, per 
entry). Another option is the arrayfields gem, if you want array storage 
but keyword interface.

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407