# What means 1\_000\_000

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-means-1-000-000/56877>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [April 5, 2006, 10:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-means-1-000-000/56877 "2006-04-05T10:55:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![eduardo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/6a8cbe/32.png) [@eduardo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eduardo)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2006, 10:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-means-1-000-000/56877/1 "2006-04-05T10:55:29Z")

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Hi all,  
trying ri and reading documentation for Benchmark I’ve seen an example  
that says:

Benchmark.measure {“a”\*1\_000\_000}

What’s that literall? I’ve tried to do it with 1000000 instead of  
1\_000\_000 and  
it works too.

And what means the expression “a”\*1000000? What do that?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eduardo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/6a8cbe/32.png) [@eduardo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eduardo)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2006, 10:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-means-1-000-000/56877/2 "2006-04-05T10:58:31Z")

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it’s just for readability!

1\_000 is similar to 1000

> puts “x” \* 20  
> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

it just duplicates a string multiple times (in this case 20)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eduardo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/6a8cbe/32.png) [@eduardo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eduardo)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2006, 11:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-means-1-000-000/56877/3 "2006-04-05T11:04:45Z")

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EdUarDo [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes:

> Benchmark.measure {“a”\*1\_000\_000}
> 
> What’s that literall? I’ve tried to do it with 1000000 instead of  
> 1\_000\_000 and it works too.

It _is_ the same, only more friendly for human readers.

> And what means the expression “a”\*1000000? What do that?

Why don’t you just try it in irb?

irb(main):001:0\> “a” \* 10  
=\> “aaaaaaaaaa”

It’s that simple 🙂

Regards
