From: David Masover <ninja@...>
Date: 2009-12-08T17:05:06+09:00
Subject: Re: convert string into a variable object

On Tuesday 08 December 2009 01:03:31 am Steve Wilhelm wrote:
> Toon Willems wrote:
> > On 07 Dec 2009, at 21:35, Ad Ad wrote:
> >>> to do.
> >>
> >> doesnt require the  creation of any sort of a container variable.
> >
> > A much better way to do this would be to store the city names in a hash.
> > your code would then be:
> >
> > File.open(@file). each do |x|
> >   @hash[x] = true
> > end
> 
> Would it not be better to convert to symbols?

Not if the cities are changing every day. Remember, symbols are never garbage 
collected -- they should _only_ be used when there is a finite and predictable 
number of possible symbols you might create.

Otherwise, you have a slow memory leak -- and especially for something like 
this, you're not really going to get a performance boost out of it.