[REBOL] Re: Another newbie problem
From: greggirwin:mindspring at: 2-Feb-2005 22:58
Hi Izzy,
I> Can it be optimized more?
There ain't no such thing as the fastest code. :) (any Michael Abrash
readers out there; old DDJ optimization challenges were so much fun!)
The more we know about the data, constraints, etc. the more we can
help. e.g. will the data all fit in memory? What is the approximate
percentage of duplicates? Are all values the same length? How many
unique values can be expected?
Think about this, FIND just does a linear search, so if you have a
large data set, and the match is at the end, or not there at all,
how will that affect you? The more times you call find, and the
larger your data set, the worse it's going to get, right?
What about using a hash! for lookups or a BTree? What about sorting
the data (that would group the duplicates, right?)?
Profiling is important in optimizing, because otherwise you don't know
what to optimize. The same applies to information about the problem.
:)
-- Gregg
