From: Kero <kero@...>
Date: 2006-01-06T00:37:58+09:00
Subject: Re: [SUMMARY] Numeric Maze (#60)

> Tristan's solution makes use of bit operations, because they tend to be faster
> than multiplication and division.  All you need to know about these is that n <<
> 1 == n * 2 and n >> 1 == n / 2.

Are they really faster? Ruby bits are not directly in CPU registers.

My rule of thumb is that every method call in Ruby takes a huge amount of
time, whether it is a bitshift or a multiplication (or even a regexp check).
For the record, I did a quick test:

kero@pc67140460:~/tmp$ time ruby -e '1_000_000.times { |i|  i << 1 }'
real    0m2.683s
user    0m1.970s
sys     0m0.710s
kero@pc67140460:~/tmp$ time ruby -e '1_000_000.times { |i|  i << 1 }'
real    0m2.687s
user    0m1.880s
sys     0m0.810s
kero@pc67140460:~/tmp$ time ruby -e '1_000_000.times { |i|  i * 2 }'
real    0m2.684s
user    0m2.080s
sys     0m0.600s
kero@pc67140460:~/tmp$ time ruby -e '1_000_000.times { |i|  i * 2 }'
real    0m2.689s
user    0m2.060s
sys     0m0.640s

No significant differences whatsoever.

Bye,
Kero.

PS: fun quiz, but that should be clear with all my postings :)