Comment by dragonwriter
3 months ago
They aren't interned frozen strings (unless they were symbols; String#intern was, and still is, an alias for String#to_sym, and String#freeze did not and does not imply String#intern or String#to_sym), and it also (even for literals) took an extra step to either freeze or intern them prior to Ruby 2.3 introducing the "# frozen_string_literal: true" file-level option (and Ruby 3.4 making it unnecessary because it is on by default.)
Amusingly, string literals interned by default in 3.4 or because of the setting in earlier >2.3 Rubies are still (despite being interned) Strings, while Strings interned with String#intern are Symbols.
> They aren't interned frozen strings
Doesn't matter. The parent claim was:
> You'd just have a broken VM if you used mutable strings for metaprogramming in Ruby
From day one it was possible to freeze strings used in metaprograming. I mean Ruby Hashes do that to strings keys.
> Ruby 3.4 making it unnecessary because it is on by default.
That's incorrect: https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/10/28/string-...