From: Dave Howell <groups@...>
Date: 2006-06-02T05:35:31+09:00
Subject: Re: How use Profiling, a Quick Guide.


On Jun 1, 2006, at 13:17, Sam Roberts wrote:

>> Er, the profile list? Push "Where do I find/how do I generate a
>> 'profile list'?" onto the question_stack
>
> 'profile', in the std lib

Alas, you have still underestimated how clueless I am. 'the std lib'? 
Is that a Ruby standard library? A Unix standard library? And if I find 
this library, what do I do with it? How would I invoke profile-omancy?

>> question_stack << "[Error: File 'strace' Not Found]"
>
> ktrace on BSD systems

Oo! My command line liked that much better. The man page even has 
examples. Whether or not I can figure out what it's telling me, and if 
so, what I'm supposed to do about it, remains to be seen, but it's 
certainly a start.

>>> * Large number of calls to .size and .length and .count_objects
>>> methods are a
>>>   clue some nidjit somewhere is doing something really N^2 stupid
>>> like...
>>>    for( i=0; i < container.count_objects(); i++) {
>>>    }
>>
>> question_stack << "What exactly is stupid about that? And what's the
>> smart alternative?
> max=container.count_objects()
> for( i=0; i < max; i++) {
> }
>
> container.each....

OK, so "container.each" is presumably the smart alternative, and what 
I'd instinctively use anyway, but I don't understand what it is about 
"for( i=0; i < max; i++)" that makes it "really n^2 stupid." (If n, or 
N, = 1, then that wouldn't be all that stupid, but the use of the term 
"nidjit" leads me to guess n is likely to be at least the age of said 
nidjit, or some other suitably > 1 value. :)