From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2006-09-08T15:10:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Faster datastructure for lookups wanted

m94asr@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>   maybe somebody can recommend me the right datastructure or
> any other advice would be a big help.
> 
> My code spends most of its execution time doing lookups from
> a hashtable with about 1M keys. The keys are strings and the values
> are arrays of integers. Most of the time only of length 1.
> 
> I do not care  how long the construction of the datastructure takes,
> but the lookup should be as fast as possible.
> 
> xs.each{|x|
>    if found = hash[x]
>      #do sth. 
>    end
> }

As others said already, a Hash is pretty much the fastest for the 
general case.  How do your string keys look like?  Maybe it is worth 
trying symbols instead of strings?

If you unveil a bit more about your application we might be able to come 
up with more suggestions.

Kind regards

	robert