From: Marnen Laibow-Koser <marnen@...>
Date: 2010-01-18T23:47:45+09:00
Subject: Re: basic question: passing a modifiable argument to a routi

lalawawa wrote:
> When you say that += creates a different object, then are you saying
> that when I do
> 
> a = 0
> while a < 1000000
>   a += 1
> end

BTW, the more idiomatic way of doing this would be something like
1.upto(1_000_000).each do |n|
  # something
end

> 
> it creates a million different objects and garbage collects most of
> them?  Isn't that horribly inefficient for just doing integer
> arithmetic?

Actually no.  For performance reasons, Fixnums are implemented as 
singletons in all Ruby environments that I'm aware of.

But yes, try playing around with the object_id method and you'll see 
interesting things.

Best,
-- 
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen@marnen.org
-- 
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