Re: Slowdown
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg53261] Re: Slowdown
- From: David Bailey <dave at Remove_Thisdbailey.co.uk>
- Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 04:29:38 -0500 (EST)
- References: <cr33tt$je6$1@smc.vnet.net> <cr8ekc$r8r$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Roland Franzius wrote:
> Maxim wrote:
>
>>Consider:
>>
>>In[1]:=
>>Module[{f, L},
>> L = f[];
>> Do[L = f[L, i], {i, 10^4}]
>>] // Timing
>>
>>Module[{weirdness, L},
>> L = weirdness[];
>> Do[L = weirdness[L, i], {i, 10^4}]
>>] // Timing
>>
>>Out[1]=
>>{0.015*Second, Null}
>>
>>Out[2]=
>>{3.063*Second, Null}
>>
>>Here the timings differ by a factor of 200. Besides, the timing grows
>>linearly in the first case and quadratically in the second (therefore, for
>>n=10^5 there will be an approximately 2000 times slowdown). We can only
>>guess that something goes wrong with the symbol name hashing.
>
>
> The timing difference occurs when the symbol "wierdness" exceeds 8
> characters. Test it for "wierdnes". That seems to be a consequence of
> the machine routine for string comparison. Up to 8 characters can be
> used without using a memory to memory compare. Of course it should be
> possible to write a compare routine that makes not such a bit step.
>
In fact almost all symbols (of whatever length) are not weird! I am sure
Mathematica manipulates symbols as pointers - so their length should
only be relevant to performance for a few operations, such as input/output.
David Bailey
dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk