From: Travis Whitton <whitton@...>
Date: 2003-01-25T04:29:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Single vs double quotes and performance?

I've often wondered the same thing. The difference doesn't appear to be much:

require 'benchmark'
include Benchmark

data = ((0..9).to_a.to_s) * 2000000
double = %!"#{data}"!
single = "'#{data}'"

bm do |x|
  x.report("double:") { eval(double) }
  x.report("single:") { eval(single) }
end

      user     system      total        real
double:  0.560000   0.050000   0.610000 (  0.614154)
single:  0.510000   0.060000   0.570000 (  0.577753)

20,000,000 characters have to be scanned to do the eval, and the difference
is miniscule. I ran this test ten times, and the single was always faster, but
it's such a negligible difference that it doesn't matter.

-
Travis Whitton <whitton@atlantic.net>