Replacetext taking forever under 8.1.7

[Bruce Pokras]

I am trying to port a stack that runs fine under Livecode 7.1.4 to Livecode 8.1.7 in order to take advantage of 8.1.7’s 64-bit standalone app capability for Mac OS X “High Sierra". That is when I found that under either Yosemite or High Sierra a “replacetext" action takes over 20 minutes under 8.1.7 while under 7.1.4 it takes less than one second! The replacetext is to remove extra spaces in a 60,000 line (1.9 million character) variable, and looks like this:

put replacetext(holdIt1,"[ ]{2,10}",empty) into holdIt 

Under 8.1.7 I get the dreaded spinning beachball, although the replacetext action eventually finishes (after 20 minutes), and the script then runs to completion.

Any ideas about causes and cures for this issue?

Regards,

Bruce Pokras
Blazing Dawn Software
www.blazingdawn.com <http://www.blazingdawn.com/>