If statements vs case

[Richard Gaskin]

Jim Ault wrote:
> So the bottom line is that if you are executing this IF or SWITCH you can
> expect to waste....
> 
> Per trip cost is
> 
> 89-74/10,000  
> = 15/10,000 milliseconds
> = 0.0015 milliseconds
> which is 1.5 millionths of a second longer per loop to use IF
> 
> A million here, a million there, and pretty soon your talking real seconds
> :-)
> 
> Thanks for the testing work.

Fortunately not much effort since my script editor inserts an outline of 
benchmarking scripts in a single keystroke, and I was benchmarking some 
other project-related stuff here this morning.

I rarely benchmark much at all these days because Rev's so fast it 
usually doesn't matter.  As in this case, we're talking tiny fractions 
of a millisecond, which is commonly the sort of differences I find 
between alternate ways of doing things in Rev once you avoid the basics 
like keeping data out of fields when doing calculations on it.

But that said, I have a couple applications that are quite feature-rich, 
and some of these features require that the app be as responsive as 
possible.  Like you say, if a routine is called frequently enough to add 
up to even tenths of seconds then performance will become noticeably 
different.

And with these more complex apps, often I don't know today what features 
I'll be asked to add next year, so if I optimize code now I have less to 
worry about when the next set of feature requests comes in.

The exercise also illustrated another benefit of switch over if-then: 
it took a couple of tries to get the logic of the if-then to do what it 
needed to, while logic of a switch blocks is often more self-evident to 
read.

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