5 ms·

I don't think persistence in memory was the selling point. The other selling point is that doing comparisons are faster because `:a == :a` can compare on a memo

I don't think persistence in memory was the selling point. The other selling point is that doing comparisons are faster because `:a == :a` can compare on a memory address while `'a' == 'a'` requires comparing the data at the different memory addresses. Someone tell me I'm wrong.

reconbot 12y ago
You're right. Also they symbols won't be garbage collected if they are currently keys in a hash.
riffraff 12y ago
symbols should also be instantiated at most once causing possible memory savings, but recent rubys should do that for frozen strings too.