From: SASADA Koichi <ko1@...>
Date: 2013-02-06T23:21:40+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:51909] Re: [ruby-trunk - Feature #7791][Feedback] Let symbols be garbage collected

(2013/02/06 22:50), shyouhei (Shyouhei Urabe) wrote:
> @rosenfeld do you have any conceptual patch to implement it?  The reason Symbols aren't GCed is simply because the committers (including matz) don't have any idea how.

One rough idea (but not verified) is:

Separated Symbols into two sets:
  (a) Symbols created by rb_intern()
  (b) Symbols created from String object (String#to_sym)

(a) is internal symbols which are used by the interpreter such as method
names, attribute names and so on.

(b) is mainly created by ruby program (and used for DoS attack).

I think (hope) (b) can be collected at GC timing with some development
efforts. But not touched. Sorry.

PS. Of course, a program making symbols belong to (a) will be DoS
attack. For example, the program makes many methods or attributes by
untrusted data, it will be same problem (but I believe nobody makes such
a bad program).

-- 
// SASADA Koichi at atdot dot net