Sure - I was assuming that as Symbol (as an interned string) is basically
just a pointer. So comparisons are O(1), etc. What I'd like to understand
is, why can't it be a bitstype? Currently, it's not, so Symbol cannot be
used in a lightweight (i.e. stack-allocated) immutable type. I assume
there's a good reason for it, I just want to understand why.
On Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at 10:03:14 PM UTC+2, Cedric St-Jean wrote:
>
> Scott is right, storing/comparing/hashing symbols is probably all done on
> the pointers, so it's as efficient as you can hope for.
>
> On Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at 11:44:46 AM UTC-4, Oliver Schulz wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I was thinking of using Symbols as keys in a Dict{Symbol,Int64}, instead
>> of Strings. However, Symbol is not a bitstype, so there I guess there will
>> still be a lot of individual memory allocation when working with such a
>> Dict, right?
>>
>> Actually, why isn't Symbol a bitstype (according to
>> https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/5880, symbols are not GCed)?
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Oliver
>>
>>
