in reply to Re: Speeding up perl script
in thread Speeding up perl script


Thank you for your answer. And sorry for the lack of details in my description. The files I am reading are txt files with each row containing a parameter name and its value (separated by spaces). However, I don't have any difficulties reading the files, creating an array of names and an array of the corresponding values.

What does "do" mean in this context? As I'm sure you understand, I'm quite a beginner at Perl :)

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Re^3: Speeding up perl script
by Bloodnok (Vicar) on Jan 28, 2009 at 09:24 UTC
    For a description of the do operator, see perlop.

    In the light of your reply, I'd probably do something along the lines of the following (in a script)... 

    use warnings;
use strict;

my %vars;

while (<>) {
    local @_ = split;
    $vars{$_[0]} = $_[1];
}

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    which takes each line of each file given on the command line and updates the %vars hash, keyed on the first field & values of the 2nd field - as per postings here and elsewhere on this thread.

    A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))
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Re^3: Speeding up perl script
by cdarke (Prior) on Jan 28, 2009 at 10:39 UTC
    After creating the hash, using the parameter values as the key (see above), you can search for the parameter with:
    if (exists $vars{'parameter'}) {
   # It is there!
}
else {
   # It is not there
}

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    This avoids an iterative search through the array.
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