Edit menu recipe?

[Richard Gaskin]

J. Landman Gay wrote:

> On 8/20/04 11:04 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> 
>> If one's picky about minimizing typing, because most of those are 
>> handled by the engine you can use the case block's fall-through 
>> feature to trim the code -- this version also handles "Select All" for 
>> objects:
>>
>> on menuPick which
>>    switch which
>>    case "Cut"
>>    case "Copy"
>>    case "Paste"
>>    case "Undo"
>>      do which
> 
> 
> Picky purist point: using "do" forces the compiler to run and can slow 
> the script, which is why I use the redundant form.

Yes, in older, slower xTalks one might get a noticeable difference 
between "do" and the natural message path.

But it's a whole other world with Transcript -- this script tests timing 
of both the natural message path and the "do" command:

-------------------------
on mouseUp
   put 1000 into n
   -- test 1: natural message flow
   put the millisecs into s
   repeat n
     DoSomething
   end repeat
   put the millisecs - s into s1
   --
   -- test 2: do:
   put the millisecs into s
   repeat n
     do "SomethingElse"
   end repeat
   put the millisecs - s into s2
   --
   put "Natural: "& (s1/n) &"ms/iteration    Do: "&(s2/n)&"ms/iteration"
end mouseUp

on DoSomething
   get 1+1
end DoSomething

on SomethingElse
   get 1+1
end SomethingElse
--------------------------

When I run it on my PBG4 1GH I get:

   Natural: 0.013ms/iteration    Do: 0.016ms/iteration

So yes, using the do command is slower, but only by about 0.003ms.

Given that the menu script is responding to a user action and no user 
will be faster than 0.003ms, there's no perceptable savings to the 
system's performance, but using do can offer immediate savings for 
developer productivity.

While curmudgeonly, there is a practical point here:

With Transcript you can often make choices that put your productivity as 
a developer over concerns about "fast" or "slow".  Those terms are 
relative, and as we've seen with accessing custom properties vs. globals 
the actual differences are often very small, imperceptable at even 
10,000 iterations or more.

When in doubt benchmark, and consider whether the script in question 
will be responding to a direct user action....

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com