Benching strings in ruby-1.9.3-p327 with falcon-gc patch.

bench.rb

require "benchmark"

def s(s) ; s ; end

Benchmark.bmbm do |bm|
  times = 10_000_000

  THESTRING = "asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234"
  bm.report("constant") { times.times {
    THESTRING
  } }

  bm.report("string-literal") { times.times {
    "asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234"
  } }

  bm.report("string-literal-in-method") { times.times {
    s "asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234"
  } }

  bm.report("symbol-literal") { times.times {
    :asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234.to_s
  } }

  cache = {:asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234 => THESTRING}
  bm.report("symbol-string-cache") { times.times {
    cache[:asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234asdf1234]
  } }
end

result.txt

Rehearsal ------------------------------------------------------------
constant                   0.720000   0.010000   0.730000 (  0.732522)
string-literal             2.000000   0.000000   2.000000 (  2.011417)
string-literal-in-method   2.370000   0.000000   2.370000 (  2.380874)
symbol-literal             2.400000   0.000000   2.400000 (  2.399494)
symbol-string-cache        0.990000   0.000000   0.990000 (  0.997033)
--------------------------------------------------- total: 8.490000sec

                               user     system      total        real
constant                   0.730000   0.000000   0.730000 (  0.727206)
string-literal             1.770000   0.010000   1.780000 (  1.770566)
string-literal-in-method   2.270000   0.000000   2.270000 (  2.282503)
symbol-literal             2.210000   0.000000   2.210000 (  2.210457)
symbol-string-cache        1.000000   0.000000   1.000000 (  1.002717)