From: lalawawa <usenet@...>
Date: 2010-01-19T01:20:10+09:00
Subject: Re: basic question: passing a modifiable argument to a routine

On Jan 18, 10:47 am, Rick DeNatale <rick.denat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 9:25 AM, lalawawa <use...@ccjj.info> 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
>
> > it creates a million different objects and garbage collects most of
> > them?  Isn't that horribly inefficient for just doing integer
> > arithmetic?
>
> In this case, those integers are all Fixnums which are represented by
> immediate values, so no allocation or GC is involved.
>
> Of course if you are really concerned about efficiency you can always
> do that calculation as:
>
> a = (1000000*1000000 + 1000000) / 2
>
> --
> Rick DeNatale
>
> Blog:http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
> Twitter:http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale
> WWR:http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale
> LinkedIn:http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale

Well, I'm trying to understand.  If I do

a = 0
while a < 1_000_000
    a += 1
end

a.object_id at the end is 2000001.  Does this mean a 2 million
instances of fixnum are in existance, just not garbage collected?