LC7 and 8 - Non responsive processing large text files

[Richard Gaskin]

Mark Talluto wrote:

 > Version 7/8 are slower than version 6 in almost every way. Here are a
 > couple of bug reports on the issue:
 >
 > <http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=16387>
 > <http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15711>
 >

You may want to add this enhancement request to that list:
<http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=17210>

It deals specifically with reading/parsing large files, using two 
methods: the common "read until <char> form, and one using a custom 
buffer similar to Mark's email earlier today.  Both forms use binary 
mode, so encodings don't come into play.


 > There are others out there. The team has been trying to make LC 8
 > more performant though. So our reports are being worked on.

I discussed the performance concerns with Peter in our call last week. 
As you noted, they've been working on them, and in some cases have had 
significant success.

Some chunk expressions, esp. related to lineoffset, and now nearly as 
fast as in v6.x, while also retaining all the features Unicode now offers.

Other forms of chunk expressions may benefit from further performance 
enhancement, and similarly with arrays some performance gain have been 
made in in recent versions while others are still on the to-do list.

File I/O remains an area slated for review in an upcoming version, and I 
haven't yet tested socket I/O so I don't know if performance there has 
changed but is obviously just as important.

Given that v8.0 is now in RC, it would seem extremely unlikely that any 
enhancements not already close to completion will land in v8.0 Stable.

That said, the team seems eager to increase performance as much as 
practical, and with the progress made thus far -- with v8 being much 
faster in many operations than v7 -- I'm confident we'll see a version 
after v8.0 that will continue this trend.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com