From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2003-03-16T23:47:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Hash load and GC

On Sun, Mar 16, 2003 at 02:33:55PM +0900, Xiangrong Fang wrote:
> 1. Which is the best way to load a big hash from disk? I have searched
> the talk archive, and I find that sysread seems the fastest. I also
> tried to use Marshal.load, it seems slower. BTW, I'm using 1.6.7-mswin32

In my experience Marshal.load is blindingly fast. Just marshal the entire
hash as one object, and read it back in thusly:

  dict = Marshal.load(File.open("/etc/en.dic.rm"))

(Aside: is there a standard extension for 'ruby marshalled' objects??)

You could compare speed with

  dict = Marshal.load(File.open("/etc/en.dic.rm").read)

which may reduce calls to the Ruby IO library, at the expense of having to
read the whole file into RAM at once.

Regards,

Brian.