From: kwatch@... (kwatch)
Date: 2002-05-09T05:59:00+09:00
Subject: Re: [Q] non-alphabetic character in symbol

Thanks matz,
I'm grad to meet(?) you.

matz@ruby-lang.org (Yukihiro Matsumoto) wrote in message news:<1020834299.183881.7437.nullmailer@picachu.netlab.jp>...
> 
> |This means that I must use intern() if I want to contain
> |non-alphabetical character in symbol?
> 
> Yes.  Minero Aoki once proposed % notation for symbols, but consensus
> was not made at the time.
> 
> 							matz.

OK, and another question:
Which is faster, hash['+symbol'.intern()] or hash['+symbol'] ?

Because :symbol is compiled directly when parsing and 'symbol'.intern() executes
a method every time, I guess that :symbol is faster than 'symbol'.intern(),
and hash[:symbol] is faster than hash['symbol'.intern()].
But I don't know if hash['symbol'.intern()] is faster than hash['symbol'].

What I want to do is to use a string which contain '+', '-', '=', ... as
a key of Hash.
   .-------------------------------------------------
    hash = Hash.new()
    hash['+symbol'.intern()] = 123;
    hash['+symbol'] = 456;
   .-------------------------------------------------
I heard that symbol is faster than string as a key of Hash, but
'+symbol'.intern() may be not so fast.
Which is faster, hash['+symbol'.intern()] or hash['+symbol'] ?

Regards,
kwatch