Another newb question - How to you clear a field?

[Dave Cragg]

On 8 May 2009, at 20:13, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> Scott Rossi wrote:
>> Recently, J. Landman Gay wrote:
>>> if literal names are not quoted, the engine takes twice as long to  
>>> execute the
>>> statement because of the additional lookup.
>> Jacque, is this really true?
>
> I confess I made up the "twice as long" part, I don't really have  
> any hard numbers on the increase.

I do. :-)

I've held the same belief as yourself. It looks like we're wrong. On  
my machine (an intel mac)), 100,000 accesses of a field (get field  
whatever) takes about 95ms for both quoted and unquoted field names.  
(The field contains about 140 characters) Actually, on average, using  
a quoted name takes about 2ms longer (for 100,000 accesses). Accessing  
the field by its number takes about 85 ms. And by its ID takes about  
80ms.

Knowledge is power. I bet Bill Gates doesn't know this.

Cheers
Dave