there are methods in the ruby reflection api that take strings and silently convert them to symbols so it is really easy to accidentally leak memory. however,

there are methods in the ruby reflection api that take strings and silently convert them to symbols so it is really easy to accidentally leak memory. however, on ruby trunk they added a method: rb_check_id which can be used to check if a string has been already symbolized (https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/parse.y#L10465 https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/parse.y#L10465). this means when these reflection methods get passed a string and it hasn't been symbolized they can bail out and not symbolize the string. (https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/object.c#L2073 https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/object.c#L2073)