Issue #5698 has been reported by Charles Nutter. ---------------------------------------- Bug #5698: rexml Encoding logic creates unnecessary singleton classes, aliases at runtime http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/5698 Author: Charles Nutter Status: Open Priority: Normal Assignee: Category: lib Target version: Ruby 1.8.7 ruby -v: 1.8.7 head The logic for switching a given parser to a new encoding currently does the following: * Reopens the Encoding module (only on first use of the encoding) * Defines two new methods for the encoding being applied (only on first use) * Singletonizes the parser object and aliases the encoding-specific methods to "encode" and "decode" This last phase is unnecessary, but happens at runtime whenever an encoding is applied to a parser. The resulting singletonizing and method aliasing causes cache flushes. I have created a patch that does not use this singleton logic and which will not cause any singletons or method table updates at steady-state. https://gist.github.com/1420708 I know 1.8.7 is only in security patch mode, but I thought I'd throw this out there. JRuby will probably apply it to our fork of 1.8.7 stdlib. -- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org