You can get away with straight text for small data sets, but I would never suggest using a single variable and line references for random access on anything more than a few tens of thousands of lines -- although I will point out that in your test, even working with a million lines meant a worst case scenario of <1/10th of a second.
But that isn't what "repeat for each" is about. It's for doing something with all the data, either sequentially or in aggregate. If you need random access to a large data set, then an array or a database is clearly the way to go. On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:37 PM, Kay C Lan <lan.kc.macm...@gmail.com>wrote: > Excellent rules of thumb, though there is a caveat to all this. > > Unfortunately I haven't seen a further response from Glen, as I was going > to wait to ask one more question, before offering further suggestions; but > I'll now offer it anyway. > > Glen doesn't mention what the final use/access of the data will be. If you > are only every going to deal with the data as a whole, then repeat for each > line will generally be the fastest. On the other hand, if after preparing > all your lists and merging them, the final purpose is to pick small bits > and pieces out of it from here, there and anywhere, arrays (or a db) might > be better. > > So the caveat is, always test and compare. It might be faster to create and > merge the data using repeat for each, but slower to access it that way. It > might be slower to merge the data using arrays, but faster to access it > final format. > _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
