From: "T. Onoma" <transami@...>
Date: 2003-12-11T10:56:36+09:00
Subject: Re: [Q] Fast loading of BIG data structures

On Thursday 11 December 2003 02:27 am, Steven Lumos wrote:
> My question is: Is there an even faster way to load a big structure
> than this?
>
> My first thought was to use Marshal, but I was surprised to find that
> Marshal.load takes about twice as long as require:
>
>   $ ruby -v
>   ruby 1.8.0 (2003-08-04) [sparc-solaris2.8]
>   $ time ruby -e "require 'network'"
>   real    0m3.431s
>   user    0m3.080s
>   sys     0m0.200s
>   $ time ruby -e "File.open('network.dump') {|f| Marshal.load(f)}"
>   real    0m7.321s
>   user    0m6.880s
>   sys     0m0.170s

Curious. What kind of machine are you running this on? These times seem a bit 
slow in general.

I'm also wondering how Yaml would compare. Are you running ruby 1.8+? If so 
try using to_yaml and dumping the result to a file, and then reload. Simple 
example to help if you're not familiar with Yaml:

  # save in yaml format
  require 'yaml'
  require 'network'
  File.open('network.yaml','w'){|f| f << Features.to_yaml}

You might want to look at the yaml file at this point, it is rather readable. 
Then try

  # load yaml file
  require 'yaml'
  Features = Yaml::load(File.open('network.yaml'))

And see what kind of times you get.

T.