On Thu, 29 Dec 2005, Johannes Friestad wrote: > That's where the 'can be' part comes in :) > The point is that symbols support quicker lookup by their nature. > Whether they are quicker in practice will depend on the > implementation. From the timings you give, it looks like symbol lookup > is implemented by converting the symbol to a string and doing string > lookup. Which is obviously not quicker :) i never consider that as an impl - i bet your right though... time for me to read the source. cheers. -a -- =============================================================================== | ara [dot] t [dot] howard [at] noaa [dot] gov | all happiness comes from the desire for others to be happy. all misery | comes from the desire for oneself to be happy. | -- bodhicaryavatara ===============================================================================