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RVALUE is the base type in Ruby's heap. It refers specifically to [this struct](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/7bd93293621b85a87e7e117317...). All Ruby objects are instances of an RVALUE struct.

Hope that helps!

In particular in Ruby it derives from "Ruby value" rather than the C/C++ rvalues that can appear on the righthand side of an assignment.

The first post in the series also explains RVALUES in the context of the Ruby Heap if it's helpful https://jemma.dev/blog/gc-internal

Yes. In the Ruby VM, an RVALUE [0] is a union (a "generic type") of structs that represent all the different kinds of Ruby object types and a couple of runtime types.

[0] https://sonots.github.io/ruby-capi/db/d8e/struct_r_v_a_l_u_e...

Rvalue seems to be a 40-byte "Ruby Object". (If an object takes up more than 40-bytes, it gets an additional allocation, and the first 40-bytes go into the rvalue "slot").