(no subject)

Marielle Lange M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
Sun Jul 3 07:53:55 EDT 2005


>Jon,
>
>My point exactly: "a large array of numbers" = "data" So is the photograph
>you are computing the histogram on. Would either of these change, if you
>switch languages? Hence, they are external to your language, or "data."
>
>I write business application software, so I've never had to compute a
>histogram and admit I have no clue as to what's involved in that process.
>
>But, if you know the kind of data manipulation you will be doing in advance,
>you can parse, index, or otherwise reorganize the source data in such a way
>as to minimize large data sources or "large arrays."
>
>Now, depending on how well you organized your data, whether your language is
>in pcode or machine compiled, results in only milliseconds of difference.

Jim,

I support your view... I often have to manipulate huge lexical databases (50.000
lines, 50 columns). Usint the same computer language, I was often able to cut
running time down from 30 minutes to 2 min. by using more effective resource
management techniques.

Jon,

If you cannot see ways in which you can reorganize your data... why not consider
using Awk for your array processing (something that Awk excels at). Awk is
freely available on any platform, doesn't take more than 200K, and can be
learned in one day for your purpose (simple array processing). It is quite easy
to call to it to do array processing on large data and get the result back to
revolution. You will find information about Awk at
<http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~loui/sigplan> (Why GAWK for AI?)
<http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=ProgrammingAwk>

Marielle



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