I know that this probably isn't appropriate for the "discussion" list, but I'm so glad to know that Teddy is alive that I felt compelled to say something. ;) Welcome back Teddy, you've been gone far too long. I was starting to think someone had put you in a barrel of acid somewhere.
----- Original Message ---- From: Teddy R. Payne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, August 4, 2008 1:40:17 PM Subject: Re: [ACFUG Discuss] Theoretical Question About Efficiency (1) John asked Bill to call his wife. (2) John-i asked Bill-j to call his-i wife. (3) John asked Bill to call John's wife. In each of the above statements, what seems to be in issue here is how to prevent some sort of ambivalence on diction or grammer. In example 2, diction and grammer do not apply as this introduces some sort of notation to associate formal nouns and posession that looks like something technical. In example 1, the ambivalence allows for two possible cases, but could be argued if the person who wrote the statement was using traditional grammer rules or the interpreter is using tradional grammer rules. John could be asking Bill to call Bill's wife because of the ambivalence around "his." So, the other option is John asked Bill to call John's wife, which leads to example 3. In example 3, you have a clear definition of who's wife is in question. If I were to receive a formal design document or business requirement that would aim to create concrete understanding, example 3 is the most clear. There is not question who's wife, there is no question who the sender of the message (John) is nor the receiver (Bill) is for the message (call your wife, Bill). Now, even though Example 2 is also clear in my mind, I am trained in paradigm that caters to deciphering regular expressions and data interpretation. What if the reviewer is not as trained? I am sure he/she would be intelligent enough to understand the meaning, but you force that person to spend extra time in deciphering. So, the effeciency is either you have a very quick interpreter or you have a clear definition that doesn't need deciphering, so that means a verbose translator. So spend the time in being verbose and concrete internally or expect alatency in translation when a primer for the notaiton may or may not be available. If I am completely off base on intention of this email, feelf ree to ignore me. =) Teddy On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Fennell, Mark P. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Aside from efficiency, one might should also consider accuracy or effectiveness. Statement 2 is very clear about who asked, who called and who's wife. Sure, without the integrity constraints enabled in statement 1, the application or reader can interpret what is being said relatively quickly. Statement 3, I would suggest, uses an index of sort's but it isn't completely explicit that John Jones is asking Bill Collins to call John Jones wife. It could be interepreted as John Jones asked Bill Collins to call John Hancock's wife. Therefore, it seems to suggest that while statement 2 is slower to read and understand as part of a natural or spoken language, it is by far the most effective in communicating accurate details. From a programming or database perspective the parse-compile-execute of statement 2 will probably run faster because the the join is 1-to-1 accurate. Of course, that depends on the system. If the program simply stops at the first match rather than comparing all possible matches, the speed should favor a 1-to-1 index of the data. For example, if you call #USER_NAME# inside of a <cfoutput query="myQuery">, will cf spend some time looking for the var in the query output, then look in the session scope, then the client scope, then the application scope, or something like that? Not very efficient. #session.user_name# would be far more efficient. In theory. No? Personally, I'm always willing to sacrifice a bit of speed in deference to integrity. I'd rather know that Bill Collins called John Hancock's wife to tell her about the "accident" because John Johnson's wife is a personal injury lawyer. :) I am curious as to why complexity of the object would matter as in the final calculation. mf mark fennell athens regional medical center athens, ga On Aug 4, 2008, at 10:17 AM, Peyton Todd wrote: > It seems important to begin by pointing out that this question is not > aimed at solving a practical problem. It has nothing to do with a need > on my part to make an actual program run faster or use fewer > resources. Instead it has to do with a linguistics paper I'm writing, > part of which will evaluate a claim recently made by Noam Chomsky, the > world's most famous linguist (who most of you have probably heard of > due to his politics, which is not the issue here). > > The traditional view as to the structure underlying a sentence like > (1) below, championed by Chomsky for years, has been the the > participants are indexed (using subscripts like 'i' and 'j' as in > (2) below), thus enabling the grammatical module which assigns meaning > to resolve the ambiguity of the surface sentence (whether it is John's > wife or Bill's who is to be called). Recently, supposedly in order to > arrive at a more 'economical' system, Chomsky has proposed something > like (3) below, where John is repeated in the underlying structure, > but where the second occurrence is not sent to the pronunciation > system (or is turned into 'his', but let that pass > - in other sentences although not this one, the copy leads to nothing > at all being pronounced). > > (1) John asked Bill to call his wife. > (2) John-i asked Bill-j to call his-i wife. > (3) John asked Bill to call John's wife. > > My question is which of these two approaches would be more economical > from a programming point of view. Abstractly, the question seems to > involve pointers vs. copying. Another point I should clarify: I know > next to nothing about programming in 'C', including how to symbolize a > pointer. But it seems to me the question boils down to which of the > two methods below is more efficient. Right? > > Copy Method Pointer Method > ----------- -------------- > a = 2; a = 2; > b = 3; b = 3; > c = b; c = pointer-to(b); > print a + c; print a + c; > > My guess is that (although the pointer method may use less memory), > the speed of the two approaches may depend on whether it is more > efficient to make a copy vs. establishing and then making use of a > pointer. Secondly, my supposition is that the choice could depend on > the complexity of the object in b. In the example above, it's just an > integer. But suppose it were a complex object of some kind, > instantiated in b, but then either copied to c or pointed to by c > (with '+' having some different, object-appropriate definition by > polymorphism). It that right? Or is the Pointer Method always more > efficient? If it's a trade-off, how complex an object would tip the > balance? > > Your collective wisdom would be greatly appreciated! > > Thanks, > Peyton > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from this list, manage your profile @ > http://www.acfug.org?fa=login.edituserform > > For more info, see http://www.acfug.org/mailinglists Archive @ > http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion%40acfug.org/ > List hosted by http://www.fusionlink.com > ------------------------------------------------------------- > > > ------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, manage your profile @ http://www.acfug.org?fa=login.edituserform For more info, see http://www.acfug.org/mailinglists Archive @ http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion%40acfug.org/ List hosted by http://www.fusionlink.com ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, manage your profile @ http://www.acfug.org?falogin.edituserform For more info, see http://www.acfug.org/mailinglists Archive @ http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion%40acfug.org/ List hosted by http://www.fusionlink.com ------------------------------------------------------------- -- Teddy R. Payne Google Talk - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Adobe Certified ColdFusion MX 7 Developer ------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, manage your profile @ http://www.acfug.org?fa=login.edituserform For more info, see http://www.acfug.org/mailinglists Archive @ http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion%40acfug.org/ List hosted by FusionLink ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, manage your profile @ http://www.acfug.org?fa=login.edituserform For more info, see http://www.acfug.org/mailinglists Archive @ http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion%40acfug.org/ List hosted by http://www.fusionlink.com -------------------------------------------------------------
