On 16 Feb 2005, at 17:40, Jay wrote:
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 08:13:02 +0000, Ken Gillett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
As an extension to my question, what about when repeatedly adding to a data set that needs to be written to a file? Will it be quicker to write each line directly to the file, or repeatedly add to a variable then write that to the file in one hit?
My guess is that this will have a more definitive answer since the speed difference between writing to a variable and writing to a file will make it a more obvious outcome and indeed my experience indicates that writing to a file is measurably slower. But does anyone have any in depth knowledge of these processes.
Ken,
Again, it will really depend. How "big" is the hit going to be? Big enough that storing the data in memory will eat up your RAM and force you to swap? If you're dealing with thousands of lines, you may not want to store them all in memory, especially if you're like me, running a database server on a PII/133 with 16M of RAM. On the other hand, if you're on a brand new P4 with 2G of DDR2, who really cares? Of course if your data set is multiple terabytes, even 2G isn't going to be enough.
OK, not as clear-cut as I thought. Bit more trial and error required.
Thanks.
Ken G i l l e t t
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