From: Ralph Shnelvar <ralphs@...32.com>
Date: 2009-11-24T00:44:08+09:00
Subject: Re: More on psuedo arrays; Better way?

BC>> Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
>>>> Is there a better way to do this?  
>>> 
>>> x.send("x#{rand(i % N_X_METHODS)]".to_sym))

BC>> And you don't need to_sym either.

RS> This x.send() will be executed a million times.

RS> Doesn't that have a fairly high overhead?  Won't a million symbols be
RS> generated?  In my case ... with the m array, only 20 symbols would be
RS> generated.

RS> Does it matter?

RS> Is it possible to run out of symbols?

Argh ... I was the OP.

That 10.times should have read 1_000_000.times (or some very large
number of times).

To refresh ... the following should have been the code ...



N_X_METHODS = 20

class X
  20.times do |i|
    define_method "x%02d=" % i do |arg|
      # n.b. x00= ... x19= already exist and I have no control over
      #      there names or the fact that they were created that way.
      # the puts, below, is just a placeholder for a more complicated method
      puts "Hi " + i.to_s + arg.to_s
    end
  end
end


m = Array.new(N_X_METHODS) do |i|
  ("x%02d=" % i).to_sym
end

p m


1_000_000.times do |i|
  x = X.new
  
  # select a random method
  x.method(m[rand(i % N_X_METHODS)]).call(i)
end