As far as I am aware there are three ways to dynamically call a method in Ruby:
Method 1:
s = SomeObject.new
method = s.method(:dynamic_method)
method.call
Method 2:
s = SomeObject.new
s.send(:dynamic_method)
Method 3:
s = SomeObject.new
eval "s.dynamic_method"
By benchmarking them I have established that Method 1 is by far the fastest, Method 2 is slower, and Method 3 is by far the slowest.
I have also found that .call and .send both allow calling private methods, while eval does not.
So my question is: is there any reason to ever use .send or eval? Why would you not always just use the fastest method? What other differences do these methods of calling dynamic methods have?
is there any reason to ever use
send?
call needs a method object, send doesn't:
class Foo
def method_missing(name)
"#{name} called"
end
end
Foo.new.send(:bar) #=> "bar called"
Foo.new.method(:bar).call #=> undefined method `bar' for class `Foo' (NameError)
is there any reason to ever use
eval?
eval evaluates arbitrary expressions, it's not just for calling a method.
Regarding benchmarks, send seems to be faster than method + call:
require 'benchmark'
class Foo
def bar; end
end
Benchmark.bm(4) do |b|
b.report("send") { 1_000_000.times { Foo.new.send(:bar) } }
b.report("call") { 1_000_000.times { Foo.new.method(:bar).call } }
end
Result:
user system total real
send 0.210000 0.000000 0.210000 ( 0.215181)
call 0.740000 0.000000 0.740000 ( 0.739262)