Performance Problem with large file

[Richard Gaskin]

Len Morgan wrote:
 > Here's the "Convert" mouseUp script:
 >
 > ########################################################
 >
 >  # Clear the output field we're going to use and turn if off
 >  # (for performance reasons)
 >  put empty into field "xmlOutput"
 >  put xmlFileHeader() after field "xmlOutput"
 >  set the visible of field "xmlOutput" to false
 >
 >  REPEAT for each line curLine in field "txtInput"
 >   put the item 1 of curLine into idnum
 >   put item 2 of curLine into lst_n
 >   put item 3 of curLine into fst_n
 >   put item 4 of curLine into day_in
 >   get xmlWriteNewInmateRecord(idnum, lst_n, fst_n, day_in, tCount)
 >   get setPercentDone(tCount, ttlLines)
 >   put "Record " & tCount & " of " & ttlLines into field "progressText"
 >   put tCount + 1 into tCount
 >  END REPEAT
 >
 >  # Write the closing tag
 >  put "</RCATS>" & cr after field "xmlOutput"
 >  set the visible of field "xmlOutput" to true
 >
 > #######################################################
 >
 > That's the "meat" of the handler.  Hopefully most of it will
 > be self-explanitory.  The only part that might not be obvious
 > is the setPercentDone function which is given a record number
 > and total records and update a progress bar.  Hope that sheds
 > some light.

Mark and Jim made some excellent recommendations on most of it, but the 
progress bar is something that catches my attention.  In one of my 
products I found that the progress bar update was eating so many clock 
cycles for the OS to draw its pretty rendering that cutting the 
progresss down to 1/10 cut overall processing time for the handler as a 
whole in half.

Hard to say if that's a factor here, but you could try changing this:

  get setPercentDone(tCount, ttlLines)
  put "Record " & tCount & " of " & ttlLines into field "progressText"

...to this:

  if tCount mod 10 = 0 then
    get setPercentDone(tCount, ttlLines)
    put "Record " & tCount & " of " & ttlLines into field "progressText"
  end if

...and see what happens.  With a lot of records you may never see the 
changes in between every tenth record anyway.

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