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> there's not compiled machine code that does a jump

It's more of an implementation detail, but the Ruby VM actually does a jump if all the cases are "keyable"(typically integers, strings, symbols, etc). It does a hash lookup and jump to the returning address.

https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/92466e440d459cd21e89f8bfbe...

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That's cool, thanks for the code pointer. I knew I was probably wrong in the strictest sense, especially with all the work that's gone into the various approaches to JIT and performance work in Ruby.

I should go read some of the interpreter code at some point - fun work going on there.

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