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Feature #16038

closed

Provide a public WeakMap that compares by equality rather than by identity

Added by byroot (Jean Boussier) over 5 years ago. Updated almost 3 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Assignee:
-
Target version:
-
[ruby-core:94114]

Description

I know ObjectSpace::WeakMap isn't really supposed to be used, and that the blessed interface is WeakRef. However, I'd like to make a case for a better public WeakMap.

Usage

As described in [Feature #16035], WeakMap is useful for deduplicating "value objects". A typical use case is as follows:

class Position
  REGISTRY = {}
  private_constant :REGISTRY

  class << self
    def new(*)
      instance = super
      REGISTRY[instance] ||= instance
    end
  end

  attr_reader :x, :y, :z

  def initialize(x, y, z)
    @x = x
    @y = y
    @z = z
    freeze
  end

  def hash
    self.class.hash ^
      x.hash >> 1 ^
      y.hash >> 2 ^
      y.hash >> 3
  end

  def ==(other)
    other.is_a?(Position) &&
      other.x == x &&
      other.y == y &&
      other.z == z
  end
  alias_method :eql?, :==
end

p Position.new(1, 2, 3).equal?(Position.new(1, 2, 3))

That's pretty much the pattern I used in Rails to deduplicate database metadata and save lots of memory.

The big downside here is that these value objects can't be GCed anymore, so this pattern is not viable in many case.

Why not use WeakRef

A couple of reasons. First, when using this pattern, the goal is to reduce memory usage, so having one extra WeakRef for every single value object is a bit counter productive.

Then it's a bit annoying to work with, as you have to constantly check wether the reference is still alive, and/or rescue WeakRef::RefError.

Often, these two complications make the tradeoff not worth it.

Ruby 2.7

Since [Feature #13498] WeakMap is a bit more usable as you can now use an interned string as the unique key, e.g.

class Position
  REGISTRY = ObjectSpace::WeakMap.new
  private_constant :REGISTRY

  class << self
    def new(*)
      instance = super
      REGISTRY[instance.unique_id] ||= instance
    end
  end

  attr_reader :x, :y, :z, :unique_id

  def initialize(x, y, z)
    @x = x
    @y = y
    @z = z
    @unique_id = -"#{self.class}-#{x},#{y},#{z}"
    freeze
  end

  def hash
    self.class.hash ^
      x.hash >> 1 ^
      y.hash >> 2 ^
      y.hash >> 3
  end

  def ==(other)
    other.is_a?(Position) &&
      other.x == x &&
      other.y == y &&
      other.z == z
  end
  alias_method :eql?, :==
end

p Position.new(1, 2, 3).equal?(Position.new(1, 2, 3))

That makes the pattern much easier to work with than dealing with WeakRef, but there is still that an extra instance.

Proposal

What would be ideal would be a WeakMap that works by equality, so that the first snippet could simply replace {} by WeakMap.new.

Changing ObjectSpace::WeakMap's behavior would cause issues, and I see two possibilities:

  • The best IMO would be to have a new top level ::WeakMap be the equality based map, and have ObjectSpace::WeakMap remain as a semi-private interface for backing up WeakRef.
  • Or alternatively, ObjectSpace::WeakMap could have a compare_by_equality method (inverse of Hash#compare_by_identity) to change its behavior post instantiation.

I personally prefer the first one.

Related issues 2 (1 open — 1 closed)

Related to Ruby master - Feature #16471: Two feature requests for WeakRef: get original object, callback featureOpenActions
Related to Ruby master - Feature #18498: Introduce a public WeakKeysMap that compares by equalityClosedActions
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