I'm not perfectly sure this applies to MacRuby, but I suspect it should since our Array is implemented on top of NSMutableArray: http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/archives/2005/12/23/array/ But the gist is CFArrays more or less switch to using hashes internally at some point. On 2011-01-14, at 05:05 , Robert Rice wrote:

I suspect that there is considerably more overhead in creating a Hash as compared to an Array and that using an Array is more efficient unless the Array will become large. I am wondering about how large the Array would have to be before it becomes more efficient to use a Hash. Consider the following example:

class Test def initialize @array = [] @hash = {} end

def get_from_hash( key ) @hash[ key ] end

def set_hash( key, value ) value.nil? ? @hash.delete( key ) : @hash[ key ] = value end

def get_from_array( key ) pair = @array.assoc( key ) pair ? pair.last : nil end

def set_array( key, value ) pair = @array.assoc( key ) if pair value.nil? ? @array.delete( pair ) : pair[1] = value else @array << [ key, value ] unless value.nil? end end

end

Clearly it requires more code to emulate the hash function with an Array, but would it run faster for a small number of keys?

Bob Rice

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