> OS will try to move it in swapspace if memory gets low
That defeats the idea GP presented.
That defeats the idea GP presented.
Normal case: tmpfs data stays in RAM
Worst case: it is pushed to swap partitions/files, which is no worse than it being in a filesystem on physical media to start with (depending on access patters and how swap space is arranged it may still be a little more efficient).
It isn't quite the same as /tmp being on disk anyway but under normal loads in cache, because the data will usually get written to disk even if only ever read from cache and the cached data from disk will be evicted to make room for caching other data where tmpfs data is less likely to.
Rarely used data that got evicted then behaves more or less like a normal /tmp filesystem when it does eventually get accessed, i.e. it gets read in from disk, while other data still gets all the benefits from tmpfs (e.g. ephemerality).
(If you take the thought experiment to its logical conclusion, you'll anyway end up in transparent hierarchical storage a la AS/400, where all data is just addressed by a single pointer in a very very large address space and the OS decides where that currently points to, but let's stay within the confines of what we're mostly used to...)
For practical reasons, swapspace isn't really the same thing as keeping it in an actual storage folder - the OS treats swapspace as essentially being empty data on each reboot. (You'd probably be able to extract data from swapspace with disk recovery tools though.)
On a literal level it's not the same as "keep it in RAM", but practically speaking swapspace is treated as a seamless (but slower) extension of installed RAM.
I read the GP as 'literal level' in-RAM. If I interpreted that incorrectly, apologies to GP.