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    Ruby Symbols

    Uploaded by

    Sumanth Krishna
    The simple hand out aims to explain the significance of Symbols in Ruby with the required benchmarks.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC or read online from Scribd

    Ruby Symbols

    Uploaded by

    Sumanth Krishna
    185 views3 pages
    The simple hand out aims to explain the significance of Symbols in Ruby with the required benchmarks.

    Copyright

    © Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)

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    DOC or read online from Scribd

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    The simple hand out aims to explain the significance of Symbols in Ruby with the required benchmarks.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc
    185 views3 pages

    Ruby Symbols

    Uploaded by

    Sumanth Krishna
    The simple hand out aims to explain the significance of Symbols in Ruby with the required benchmarks.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc
    of 3

    Ruby Learning through Examples

    Symbols

    Symbol is a class and the objects represent names & strings inside
    the Ruby Interpreter.

    Symbols are created by prefixing “:” colon to any variable or string


    with-in literals

    :sample_symbol # Prefixing to names

    :”This is sample symbol” # Prefixing colon to string in


    literals

    If the names are simple then prefixing colon would be apt and the
    literal option will be handy in case the symbols are lengthy strings.

    Apart from the above there is a method “to_sym” that will convert
    to symbols.

    “This is string”.to_sym # :”This is string”


    “sample_symbol”.to_sym # :sample_symbol

    Symbol class consists of following set of methods

    <=> == === =~ [] all_symbols capitalize casecmp downcase e


    mpty? encoding id2name inspect intern length match next size sli
    ce succ swapcase to_proc to_s to_sym upcase

    And includes the module – Comparable.

    We can see the count of symbols that Ruby supports by using the
    all_symbols method

    Symbol.all_symbols.size # 2860

    Note – The size is mentioned for the installed Ruby version 1.87.
    This differs version to version

    “sample_symbol”.to_sym # :sample_symbol

    One can quickly raise a query why we would need Strings if they are
    just representing strings! Why to use symbols?

    For the benefit of all and easy/quicker understanding let’s learn this
    step by step. Recollecting on Strings, Strings are nothing but
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    Page 1 of 3 Sumanth Krishna. A
    Ruby Learning through Examples

    collection of characters and they are mutable. That means the data
    string holds subjected to change any time and interpreter can never
    be aware of this change. So interpreter need to allocate memory in
    case of the strings.

    Let’s get into irb, and punch in the following line and repeat this 5
    times

    puts “This is string”.object_id #23839380

    Repeating the same for 4-5 times, you should be able to notice
    something like below. Note that the “object_id” reference differs
    each time you punch in. This proves the point that the interpreter
    needs to allocate the memory space as it does not know what data
    the string is holding.

    In case of symbols which are immutable once defined it will be


    referred to the same.

    Now try this…

    :“This is string”.object_id # 30228

    How many ever times you repeat the above, you would find that
    object id is same and it’s pointing still the same space in the
    memory.

    When to use symbol?

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    Page 2 of 3 Sumanth Krishna. A
    Ruby Learning through Examples

    As we had noted that the symbol is effective in terms of memory


    allocation and not stacking the heap with too many object id’s, it is
    suggested to use Symbols as much as possible.

    In Ruby on Rails, one would notice the usage of symbol more and
    very effectively.

    Not convinced yet! Let’s see some statistics. Copy & Paste the
    below snippet as “symbol-string-benchmark.rb”

    Executing this file you will be see the results as

    String: 13.703
    Symbol: 6.813

    Try experimenting with different ranges and appreciate the


    efficiency of symbols.

    _______________________________________________________________
    Page 3 of 3 Sumanth Krishna. A

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