From: dmertz@... (denis)
Date: 2004-07-16T01:32:17+09:00
Subject: Re: my ruby code won't go as fast as my perl code

"Dave Burt" <burtdav@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<y8pJc.1797$K53.1255@news-server.bigpond.net.au>...
> 
> The main slow bit seems to be the string concatenation and comparison
> (...+$4+$5+$6 >= start_date).
> 

You could try this one also (with String Arrays):

# [yy, yy, mm, dd, hh, mm, ss] as strings
start_date = %w{20 04 00 00 00 00 00}  
 .
 .
 .
([$3>='87'?'19':'20', $3, mm[$2], $1, $4, $5, $6] >= start_date)



Converting to integers could also help (integer comparison maybe
faster than string comparison)

mm = Hash.new
i = 0   # integer here
%w(JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC).each do |mmm|
 mm[mmm] = i = i.succ
end

#[yy, yy, mm, dd, hh, mm, ss] as integers
start_date = [20, 04, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0] 
 .
 .
 .
d3 = $3.to_i
([d3>=87?19:20, d3, mm[$2], $1.to_i, $4.to_i, $5.to_i, $6.to_i] >=
start_date)