From: "Jesús Gabriel y Galán" <jgabrielygalan@...>
Date: 2009-11-24T00:46:41+09:00
Subject: Re: More on psuedo arrays; Better way?

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Ralph Shnelvar <ralphs@dos32.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
> This x.send() will be executed a million times.
>
> Doesn't that have a fairly high overhead?  Won't a million symbols be
> generated?  In my case ... with the m array, only 20 symbols would be
> generated.
>
> Does it matter?
>
> Is it possible to run out of symbols?

A symbol is the same object for the same String representation:

irb(main):001:0> a = "test"
=> "test"
irb(main):002:0> a.object_id
=> -605126498
irb(main):003:0> b = "test"
=> "test"
irb(main):004:0> b.object_id
=> -605140798
irb(main):005:0> a.to_sym.object_id
=> 87218
irb(main):006:0> b.to_sym.object_id
=> 87218

So even if you calling to_sym on different string objects many times,
only one symbol for each different string will be created. On the
other hand, if you call send with the string, I don't know if a symbol
is created inside that call or not.

Jesus.