From: Rodrigo Rosenfeld Rosas <rr.rosas@...>
Date: 2013-02-06T23:41:36+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:51918] Re: [ruby-trunk - Feature #7791][Feedback] Let symbols be garbage collected

Em 06-02-2013 12:35, SASADA Koichi escreveu:
> (2013/02/06 23:21), SASADA Koichi wrote:
>> 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)
> Additional consideration about performance:
>
> (a) is same as current performance.
>
> (b) takes a time.
>    (b-1) Additional creation time (same as String creation and a bit)
>    (b-2) Slowdown GC time
>
> I think normal programs doesn't create (b) (sorry I'm not sure about
> ActiveSupport), so I think performance down doesn't affect people.
>

I agree that to_sym is the big problem here. I don't think using to_sym 
is usually considered a best practice but when you have to do that it is 
unlikely that you're concerned about the performance hit, don't you agree?