in reply to Eating RAM problem

sub by_string
{
    my $file = shift;
    local *IN, $/;
    open( IN, $file ) or die "Cannot open '$file': $!";
    return <IN>;
}

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Access each element with substr. Memory savings? Several bytes per character, because Perl doesn't have to create a new SV for each character.

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Re: Re: Eating RAM problem
by TheFifthDeuce (Novice) on Aug 01, 2002 at 18:08 UTC
    Chromatic, I need to get each element into an array. If the file size is 2 million bytes, then the array should have 2 million elements. How can I do that without draining RAM? Using your sub I get: 
    @blah = by_string($file);
$i = 0;
foreach(@blah){
   $i ++;
}
print $i; # Prints 1... not what I am looking for

    [download]
    Thanks
[reply]
[d/l]

      Then use length $blah[0] instead. You can do anything with strings that you can do with an array of 0's and 1's. The syntax is just a little different.

      Ron Steinke rsteinke@w-link.net
[reply]
[d/l]
      Why do you need to get each element into an array?
      Could you use Tie::VecArray; ?
[reply]
[d/l]

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