From: Marnen Laibow-Koser <marnen@...>
Date: 2010-01-19T01:27:14+09:00
Subject: Re: basic question: passing a modifiable argument to a routi

lalawawa wrote:
> On Jan 18, 10:47�am, Rick DeNatale <rick.denat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > them? �Isn't that horribly inefficient for just doing integer
>> --
>> 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?

You can think of it that way (1 million, actually -- Fixnums only use 
odd object_ids), but in fact Fixnums are implemented more efficiently 
than that, at least in MRI.  You shouldn't run into performance issues 
with Fixnums.

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