Relative speed of types of storage

[Dr. Hawkins]

As I add and update, I keep wondering about relative speeds of ways of
storing and retrieving data.

It starts with the data in memory.  I have about 500 text keys, and several
fields for each.

I coded these to a two dimensional array, and then to an in-memory sqlite
database.  At first I assumed the array would be faster, but recoded over
the convenience  of queries with "WHERE", "ORDER BY", and so forth--for
which I assume sqlite will dance circles around flipping through the
entries in a loop.

A lot of assuming . . .

(And I expect there would be a couple of orders of magnitude of speedup if
I did this in C or Fortran, where I could turn my keys into numerical
constants and have instant array lookup instead of sorting through keys . .
. at the cost of half or two thirds an order of magnitude increase in
coding time . . .)

And then there's data for a stack.  I used to keep things in invisible
fields, and just found another couple of those.  Surely variables are
faster.   But how does setting or reading a variable compare speedwise with
reading a global array (again, I'm sure it's slower than a variable
reference).

AN dos forth . . .

-- 
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins, Esq.
(702) 508-8462