On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Nicholas Clark wrote: : On Fri, Jul 05, 2002 at 02:54:18PM +0200, Aldo Calpini wrote: : > this approach saves memory, because you can create as many copies of a : > string as you want, without allocating it many times. unless you modify : > them, at least. it's also usually a great speed boost, because copying a : > string is performed in O(1) time, instead of O(n) - where n is the size of : > the string. : : I suspect that the speed boost is going to be more noticeable for most : applications than the memory saving. It doesn't matter if I'm wrong on this :-)
It's a real win for regexes that want to map $1, $2, etc. onto an existing string. Not to mention $`, $& and $'. Larry
