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In Ruby, Object#equal?
method is used to compare two objects by their
identity, that is, the two objects are exactly the same or not.
Ruby also has Object#eql?
method which returns true if two objects
have the same value.
For example:
1
2str1 = "Sample string"
3str2 = str1.dup
4
5str1.eql?(str2) #=> true
6
7str1.equal?(str2) #=> false
8
We can see that object ids of the objects are not same.
1
2str1.object_id #=> 70334175057920
3
4str2.object_id #=> 70334195702480
5
In ruby, Set
does not allow duplicate items in its collection.
To determine if two items are equal or not in a Set
ruby uses Object#eql?
and not Object#equal?
.
So if we want to add two different objects with the same values in a set, that would not have been possible prior to Ruby 2.4 .
1
2require 'set'
3
4set = Set.new #=> #<Set: {}>
5
6str1 = "Sample string" #=> "Sample string"
7str2 = str1.dup #=> "Sample string"
8
9set.add(str1) #=> #<Set: {"Sample string"}>
10set.add(str2) #=> #<Set: {"Sample string"}>
11
But with the new
Set#compare_by_identity method introduced in Ruby 2.4,
sets can now compare its values using Object#equal?
and check for the exact same objects.
1
2require 'set'
3
4set = Set.new.compare_by_identity #=> #<Set: {}>
5
6str1 = "Sample string" #=> "Sample string"
7str2 = str1.dup #=> "Sample string"
8
9set.add(str1) #=> #<Set: {"Sample string"}>
10set.add(str2) #=> #<Set: {"Sample string", "Sample string"}>
11
Ruby 2.4 also provides the compare_by_identity? method to know if the set will compare its elements by their identity.
1
2require 'set'
3
4set1= Set.new #=> #<Set: {}>
5set2= Set.new.compare_by_identity #=> #<Set: {}>
6
7set1.compare_by_identity? #=> false
8
9set2.compare_by_identity? #=> true
10