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in reply to Re^2: better (faster) way of writing regexp
in thread better (faster) way of writing regexp

If we are assuming that isook() is fine functionally, there is a much faster way. Don't use regex! use substr! I ran same benchmarks along with a new one, substr(). Code is below. My machine, (older Win XP running Perl 5.10) is considerably slower than the other machines posting results, but I would expect similar results in the ranking if you run the code below. Having said that, all these solutions run so fast that it is hard to see how this is going to make much difference, but that depends upon the application!

This substr idea is also faster even with some simple format error tests like this snippet... This $1,$2,$3 stuff is "expensive".

substr => sub{ my $t2 = '20090123'; my $year =substr ($t2,0,4); my $mon = substr ($t2,4,2); my $day = substr ($t2,6,2); die if (length($t2)!= 8); die if ($t2 =~ /\D/); },
#!perl use v5.10; use strict; use warnings; use Benchmark qw(:all); my $results = timethese( 1e6, { repeat => sub{ my $t1 = '20090123'; $t1 =~ /(\d\d\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)/; my ($y1,$m1,$d1) = ($1,$2,$3); }, range => sub{ my $t2 = '20090123'; $t2 =~ /(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2})/; my ($y2,$m2,$d2) = ($1,$2,$3); }, substr => sub{ my $t2 = '20090123'; my $year =substr ($t2,0,4); my $mon = substr ($t2,4,2); my $day = substr ($t2,6,2); }, chkunpk => sub{ my $t3 = '20090123'; $t3 =~ m/([0-9]{8})/; my ($y3,$m3,$d3) = unpack "A4 A2 A2", $1; }, dirunpk => sub{ my $t3 = '20090123'; my ($y4,$m4,$d4) = unpack "A4 A2 A2", $t3; }, isook => sub{ my $t5 = '20090123'; $t5 =~ /(....)(..)(..)/; my ($y5,$m5,$d5) = ($1,$2,$3); }, } ); cmpthese( $results ) ; __END__ output: Benchmark: timing 1000000 iterations of chkunpk, dirunpk, isook, range +, repeat, substr... chkunpk: 4 wallclock secs ( 5.05 usr + 0.00 sys = 5.05 CPU) @ 198137.51/s (n=1000000) dirunpk: 2 wallclock secs ( 3.31 usr + 0.00 sys = 3.31 CPU) @ 301841.23/s (n=1000000) isook: 3 wallclock secs ( 3.08 usr + 0.00 sys = 3.08 CPU) @ 324886.29/s (n=1000000) range: 4 wallclock secs ( 3.23 usr + 0.00 sys = 3.23 CPU) @ 309214.59/s (n=1000000) repeat: 4 wallclock secs ( 3.03 usr + 0.00 sys = 3.03 CPU) @ 329924.12/s (n=1000000) substr: 2 wallclock secs ( 1.22 usr + 0.00 sys = 1.22 CPU) @ 820344.54/s (n=1000000) Rate chkunpk dirunpk range isook repeat substr chkunpk 198138/s -- -34% -36% -39% -40% -76% dirunpk 301841/s 52% -- -2% -7% -9% -63% range 309215/s 56% 2% -- -5% -6% -62% isook 324886/s 64% 8% 5% -- -2% -60% repeat 329924/s 67% 9% 7% 2% -- -60% substr 820345/s 314% 172% 165% 153% 149% --