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

Thought I'd add a comparison of 1.8.7 and 1.9.2. I ran them a few times. Variance was about +-0.01.

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

ruby 1.8.7 (2010-08-16 patchlevel 302) [x86_64-linux]

assign single  0.180000   0.000000   0.180000 (  0.187233)
assign double  0.180000   0.000000   0.180000 (  0.187566)
assign interp  0.880000   0.000000   0.880000 (  0.877584)
concat single  0.550000   0.020000   0.570000 (  0.567285)
concat double  0.570000   0.000000   0.570000 (  0.570644)
concat interp  1.800000   0.010000   1.810000 (  1.816955)

---

ruby 1.9.2p0 (2010-08-18 revision 29036) [x86_64-linux]

  user          system      total      real
assign single  0.140000   0.000000   0.140000 (  0.144076)
assign double  0.130000   0.000000   0.130000 (  0.142316)
assign interp  0.650000   0.000000   0.650000 (  0.656088)
concat single  0.370000   0.000000   0.370000 (  0.370663)
concat double  0.370000   0.000000   0.370000 (  0.370076)
concat interp  1.420000   0.000000   1.420000 (  1.412210)