Is there a performance gain in using single quotes vs double quotes in ruby?

Question

Do you know if using double quotes instead of single quotes in ruby decreases performance in any meaningful way in ruby 1.8 and 1.9.

so if I type

qu         


        

Answer 1

No difference - unless you're using #{some_var} style string interpolation. But you only get the performance hit if you actually do that.

Modified from Zetetic's example:

require 'benchmark'
n = 1000000
Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report("assign single") { n.times do; c = 'a string'; end}
  x.report("assign double") { n.times do; c = "a string"; end}
  x.report("assign interp") { n.times do; c = "a #{n} string"; end}  
  x.report("concat single") { n.times do; 'a string ' + 'b string'; end}
  x.report("concat double") { n.times do; "a string " + "b string"; end}
  x.report("concat interp") { n.times do; "a #{n} string " + "b #{n} string"; end}
end

output

               user       system     total    real
assign single  0.370000   0.000000   0.370000 (  0.374599)
assign double  0.360000   0.000000   0.360000 (  0.366636)
assign interp  1.540000   0.010000   1.550000 (  1.577638)
concat single  1.100000   0.010000   1.110000 (  1.119720)
concat double  1.090000   0.000000   1.090000 (  1.116240)
concat interp  3.460000   0.020000   3.480000 (  3.535724)