fastes way to search an array?

[Rick Harrison]

Hi Tiemo,

What is the average and worst time that it takes to search your 20,000 record array now?
Are there users other than you involved? Is it worth the time it will take you to optimize 
the code for the faster execution?

Now that you’ve hopefully answered these questions for yourself, and decided
it’s worth the effort, let’s more things forward a little more.

Is your array pre-sorted alphabetically? (Assuming you are aiming for that order.)
If so, it might make sense to split your big array into smaller alphabetically sorted
arrays.  Then you can test for which array to search based on the first letter of the
element you are searching for in the array, and search the smaller array.

Do a few timed tests with your array search so you can measure how much of
an improvement you have achieved.

Good luck!

Rick



> On Apr 22, 2015, at 9:20 AM, Tiemo Hollmann TB <toolbook at kestner.de> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have an array with 20000 records, where I want to extract all records,
> which either "begins with" or "contains" a search string.
> 
> Up to now I just loop thru the whole array, do the compare and extract the
> result records. I wonder, if there is a way to speed up this search? E.g.,
> does it makes a difference, if I compare the string in the key or the data
> of the array while looping thru? I mean, would it make a difference, if I
> would create an "associative" array, where my search looks up in the keys of
> the array, either by looping thru the array, or by extracting first the keys
> of the array into a separate variable, instead in the data of the original
> array?
> 
> Would it make a difference looping thru a variable, which just contains the
> keys of the array, instead of looping thru the complete array, because of
> the smaller "footprint" in the memory?
> 
> Or shouldn't I care about these differences and just let LC makes its job?
> 
> Any experiences welcome,
> 
> Tiemo
> 
>