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Re: Re: Alpha base-26 to base-10...

by Boots111 (Hermit)
on Jul 01, 2003 at 05:45 UTC ( [id://270413]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: Alpha base-26 to base-10...
in thread Alpha base-26 to base-10...

John~

I am surprised that no one else has mentioned this (because some have done it in their code), but this is the sort of situation where you want to avoid using exponentiation (be it pow or **). You should notice that the correct power can be built up by repeatedly multiplying by 26 during each pass through the loop. Making your code into:
# Convert base26 column string to number # All your Base are belong to us. my @chars = split //, $col; my $expn = 1; $col = 0; while (@chars) { my $char = pop(@chars); # LS char first $col += (ord($char) -ord('A') +1) * $expn; $expn *= 26; }

While a really good optimizer *might* do this for you, I doubt that many do, and I am relatively certain that Perl won't since it is so heavily introspective. This is the sort of optimization I always keep my eyes out for cause it can save a lot of work.

Boots
---
Computer science is merely the post-Turing decline of formal systems theory.
--???

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Re: Alpha base-26 to base-10...
by jmcnamara (Monsignor) on Jul 01, 2003 at 17:05 UTC

    this is the sort of situation where you want to avoid using exponentiation (be it pow or **.

    I guess you mean that it should be avoided because exponentiation is an expensive operation.

    In the code above there would only be at most two iterations through the loop so the effect is small. Nevertheless, it is still easy to avoid it as you have shown.

    I wrote that code more than two years ago. If I had to write it again I would probably approach it in the same way. But I would like to have come up with something like sauoq's solution which I think is the nicest solution in this thread (apart form bwana147 golf). ++ in both cases.

    --
    John.

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