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Feature #17771

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String#start_with? should not construct MatchData or set $~

Added by headius (Charles Nutter) over 3 years ago. Updated over 3 years ago.

Status:
Open
Assignee:
-
Target version:
-
[ruby-core:103153]

Description

I am working on making $~ more thread-safe in JRuby and came across this unexpected behavior:

$ rvm ruby-3.0 do ruby -e '"foo".start_with?(/foo/); p $~'
#<MatchData "foo">

The start_with? method was added 11 years ago in https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/3388 but I do not think the set of $~ was an intended feature. The start_with? method could be much faster and more thread-safe if it did not use the frame-local backref slot and did not allocate a MatchData.

Compare with match? which was added specifically (without MatchData or backref setting) to provide a fast way to check if a Regexp matches.

I propose that start_with? stop constructing MatchData, stop setting backref, and provide only its boolean result in the same way as match?.

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