From: "Mehr, Assaph (Assaph)" <assaph@...>
Date: 2004-09-17T10:45:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Tidy binding using DL


> Go it. The extern statement was correct, but the buffer string still
wasn't
> big enough to hold the results. The following takes care of it:

>    buffer = String.new            # string buffer
>    8192.times { buffer << ' ' } # must be long enough to hold results
>    Tidylib.tidySaveString(@doc, buffer, buffer.length)
>    output = buffer.strip


You are much better off doing: 
	buffer = ' ' * 8192
This way you don't invoke a method 8192 times.
Here's a sample benchmark:

c:\Temp>cat t.rb
require 'benchmark'
include Benchmark

bm(3) do |x|
  x.report("<<") { 1000.times { s = String.new(); 8192.times { s << ' '
} } }
  x.report("* ") { 1000.times { s = ' '*8192 } }
end

c:\Temp>t.rb
         user     system      total        real
<<   5.703000   0.000000   5.703000 (  5.719000)
*    0.219000   0.000000   0.219000 (  0.219000)