Do multiple substacks slow down a program?

[Eric Chatonet]

Hi Steve,

We are "anthropomorphic thinkers" and assume that a substack is "far"  
from another substack or a mainstack :-)
But all data are in RAM and as far I know you are unable to notice a  
*practical* significant difference in most cases (depends of the  
amount of data).
For instance, you have a custom property in stack A and the same  
custom property in a substack B from stack A.
 From stack A you retrieve the contents of the custom property in  
stack A (the same one) and in substack B.
You will find that retrieving the custom property contents from stack  
A is about 10% faster than from its substack B.
This seems "important" but in order to notice this difference you  
will have to run a loop 1000 times...

So, if speed is *very important* and the data you want to process are  
heavy (that's the point able to make the difference), the answer is:  
place the data in the stack that uses these data.
But in most cases, retrieving data from a substack to process them in  
the mainstack will not be noticeable.
More, if the data used by a mainstack are scattered in many  
substacks, this will not change anything :-)
So, if it is your case, give priority to your architecture.

Note that if you retrieve the same data from another stack (not a  
substack), then the time will increase about 25%.

Here is the handler I used to perform a test:

constant kTimes = 1000
on mouseUp
   put the milliseconds into tStart
   repeat kTimes
     get the cBuiltInColors of this stack
   end repeat
   put the milliseconds - tStart into tThisStackTime
   -----
   put the milliseconds into tStart
   repeat kTimes
     get the cBuiltInColors of stack "Sub"
   end repeat
   put "Substack:" && the milliseconds - tStart & cr \
       & "This stack:" && tThisStackTime
end mouseUp

The cBuiltInColors custom property was 4 lines:
blue
brown
darkorange
red

Result for 1000 loops (weighted by 100 runs):
Substack: 20 milliseconds
This stack: 18 milliseconds

Best Regards from Paris,

Eric Chatonet.

Le 24 août 05 à 16:10, Stgoldberg at aol.com a écrit :

> So far I'm running close to 100% success with advice received  
> from   this
> forum and am very grateful for that. One more question:   I'm  
> planning a program
> that uses one or more substacks. The question is whether to place  
> all the key
> data into one substack or to divide them into 2 or more  
> substacks.   One the
> one hand, dividing into separate stacks keeps everything neatly  
> arranged.
> However, does it slow down the speed of a program if scripting  
> commands go from
> one substack to another, as opposed to remaining confined to one  
> substack?
> Thanks.
> Steve Goldberg

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