Why does Ruby expose symbols for explicit use? Isn’t that the sort of optimisation that’s usually handled by the interpreter/compiler?
Why does Ruby expose symbols for explicit use? Isn’t that the sort of optimisation
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Why does Ruby expose symbols for explicit use? Isn’t that the sort of optimisation that’s usually handled by the interpreter/compiler?
Part of the issue is that Ruby strings are mutable. Since every string Ruby allocates must be independent (it can’t cache short/common ones), it’s convenient to have a
Symboltype to let the programmer have what are essentially immutable, memory-efficient strings.Also, they share many characteristics with
enum‘s, but with less pain for the programmer.