[Ticket#: 2006040510000641] Re: [OT] Articles to read

[Alex Tweedly]

Marielle Lange wrote:

> Alex,
>
> Thanks for the nice demo on how it can be done with runrev.
>
> Note that you can do without an array for you bars function
>
Funnily enough, I wrote the first version using format - but switched to 
the loop because it was more obvious.
Also, I knew that the maximum number of bars needed was < 200 or so, and 
the loop takes 0.03 milliseconds on my slow-ish laptop, so for the data 
involved, it's not a significant time saving.

>
> Also note that I deliberately avoided to have this  line
>        if tMainAlias[t] is not empty then put tMainAlias[t]  into t
> within the repeat loop on each line of each document. I put it in a  
> loop that executes at the end of the script to speed up the  
> processing (less than a second to parse a year of postings with awk).
>
There are only about 30,000 messages in a year - and executing this 
statement 30,000 times takes about 8 milliseconds - just not 
significant, and IMHO not worth the extra complexity of two loops :-)

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
> ------------------------
>
> I know you had no intention to say anything annoying, but this "There  
> - one simple solution in Rev rather than using awk and Excel :-)"  
> shows a lack of acknowledgement of the fact that Excel was needed to  
> solve the problem.  I needed Excel to efficiently skim all lines to  
> detect emails aliases. At least it was a lot faster to get it done  
> with Excel than with runrev.

You may have found it easier in Excel, but I wouldn't. In fact, I would 
have struggled to do it Excel, whereas doing it in Rev is a minor 
variation of the other loop - took a couple of minutes to write (plus 
another 5 to test !!), and runs in about 1/4 second

otoh, a few years ago I suspect I could have done it in gawk much more 
quickly than I did it in Rev today. I fully agree that there are 
specialist tools that can do some things more quickly or more easily 
than Rev.

But I feel that if a task involves more than one or two simple tools, 
then it is better to switch to a single more powerful tool such as Rev. 
Using Excel AND awk AND ...is OK once - but if you want to repeat the 
task, you're much better off with a single tool and an "all in one" stack.

> As all my websites prove, I consider revolution as a very powerful  
> programming tool. However, I sometimes use other tools because they  
> offer a better solution to some problems. The thing is that it  
> wouldn't be too difficult to provide similar tools with runrev.  As  
> all my websites show, I am interested in helping to build these  
> better tools for revolution. I *DEEPLY* regret that over the last  
> year or more, too many attempts for a discussion that would have lead  
> to this has been neutralized on this list.  That doesn't get done  
> because each time somebody signals that a few things are better done  
> with that other tool than with runrev, that person gets told off,  
> sometimes crucified.

I hope my email didn't come across as "telling you off" - certainly not 
my intent, and if it gave that impression, then I apologize.

I don't feel a need to "recreate" other tools within Rev - if the tool 
exists, and is already in my quiver of tools, then I'm happy to just use 
it. However, if I can identify what it is that makes another tool more 
useful for some kinds of problems, and therefore build a library (or 
control,. or stack, or ...) to enhance Rev's abilities in that area, 
then I'm all for it.

(btw - if I'd had this task to do without your example and description 
to start off with, I'd probably have used my "mbox" library, and 
produced a much less efficient, but more self-documenting, solution. So 
what I should do now is get that mbox library cleaned up and packaged as 
a proper library so I can release it.)

>
> My own opinion is that we have too many unnecessary religious  
> quarrels and controversies on this list.
>
Yeah.
I would say "Amen" but in the context of your helpful description of 
Laïcité that may not be appropriate :-)

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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