>You can actually skip the 'symbol' statement, it slows the handler down >(for large numbers of iterations anyway, it's seemingly 1:1 at 500, 1:2 >at 5000 and 1:15 at 50000) and the reference will be successful anyway.
Carl has a good point. Converting a string to a symbol is slow. Your code design will dictate what you want to do. While converting to a symbol is slow, using strings as a property is also very slow. For example, grabbing records from this property list: ["Carl": 1, "Kurt": 2, "Kim": 3] would be a lot slower than from this list: [#Carl: 1, #Kurt: 2, #Kim: 3] Understand that 80% of your time will be spent in 20% of your code. Determine what that 20% is, and optimize it. Sometime's you'll find the approach Carl suggests is best, sometimes another approach will work better. Cordially, Kerry Thompson [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/LUJ/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
