Re: Re: Re: Efficient processing of large directory

It has to do with how foreach (and for, which is an exact synonym) works. foreach will construct the entire list, then iterate through it. This can be very memory-intensive, which will slow the processing speed (due to cache misses and virtual memory issues.) A nearly exact rewrite of foreach in terms of while would look something like:

foreach my $n (<*.*>)
{
    # do stuff
}

----

my @list = <*.*>;
my $i = 0;
while ($i <= $#list)
{
    my $n = $list[$i];
    # do stuff
}
continue
{
    $i++;
}
[download]

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

Comment on Re: Re: Re: Efficient processing of large directory Download Code

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Efficient processing of large directory by BUU (Prior) on Oct 02, 2003 at 17:51 UTC
Er, why on earth do you tell him to use while and then to use while to do the exact same thing the for loop had been doing previously? Your method is still going to need to build the 17,000 element list and iterate over it, it just uses a more explicit form. A rewrite which gets around this would be simply: `while(my $x = <.>) { do_stuff($x); }` [download] This will only read a single file at a time and has no need to create huge lists.	[reply] [d/l]
•Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Efficient processing of large directory by merlyn (Sage) on Oct 02, 2003 at 18:54 UTC
Uh, in most modern Perls, this is using File::Glob, which does in fact pull everything into memory anyway, to properly emulate the sorted list of the shell. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply]
Re5: Efficient processing of large directory by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Oct 02, 2003 at 17:53 UTC
Because I'm not answering the original question. I'm answering the question "What's the difference between for and while?". In that context (which was obvious from the followup question), does my post make sense? ------ We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age. The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6 Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.	[reply]