Re: FAQ and string functions

[Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>]

Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com> wrote:
: So you have an 18meg text version dump of the registry. Reading it took 1.9
: seconds, splitting it on all the = signs took 1.6 seconds, and splitting it
: on all the commas took 3.6 seconds. 

This says something about fast processors and a nice Tcl library
working with a lot of memory. Now the point is, I think, what
do you intend to do with a DAT-tape sized text file? When is
split useful?

The result of a split in your example is, I presume, a list in each
case (correct?). This list has a lot of entries some of which might
be of interest. Which one do you need?

In this case you would either have to know the correct index or
use a table, and then use that value, maybe named.
The values in the table are, well, lists...

And so on.

Now if your software happens to be storing matrix rows as foo-separated
lines in a text file of known-to-be-intact content then the builtin split
operation might save you some I/O programming time, o.K.

Splitting is not parsing :-)

: How long did it take you to write the unbounded array package? To compile
: it? :-)

How long will it take to write the code that actually works with
the values split into a list?

In how many cases can you assume these values are homogenous enough
to justify the omission of separate treatment?

-- Georg