From: Dave Burt <burtdav@...>
Date: 2004-07-16T23:37:14+09:00
Subject: Re: my ruby code won't go as fast as my perl code

Thanks everyone for your input.

I'll post back in about a week when I've had have a chance to try some of
this:
* csv.rb (may well make the program more legible - thanks gabriele renzi)
* making sure files aren't all opened and not closed (oops! thanks Nobu
Nakada)
* binary search (thanks Ernie)
* String#<< or interpolation to gather the match-bits (or maybe even string
arrays... thanks Denis et. al.)
* strscan.rb (thanks Ara T. Howard)

I'm using the windows package 1.81 (13), on a P4 running Win XP. The target
system, though, is an old crusty box, maybe P1, running Windows NT.

Ara, for sample data, your generator does a pretty good job. Here are some
stats, in case you're interested:
* about 200 files (increasing very slowly; maybe 1 per year)
* roughly 1 record per file per hour
* oldest files are up to around 4 years old, and around 10MB
* that makes records about 300 bytes on average
* that makes about 35k records in those oldest files
* the records (comma-separated) consist of a date field (DD-MMM-YY HH:MM:SS)
and about 20 decimal fields
* my test runs are on about 10% of these files.