Fast string construction

citromatik has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi all

I am storing some data in a long string of "ints":

open my $fh, "<", $file or die $!;
while (<$fh>){
  my ($key,$val) = split /\t/;
  substr($bin,$key*4,4,pack("N",$val));
}
[download]

Since the $keys in the file are not sorted, I need to initialize substr with enough values (to avoid a "substr outside of string" error). Currently I am doing it like follows:

substr($bin,$_*4,4,pack ("N",0)) for (0..$last_val);
[download]

Is there a more efficient way (maybe in one go instead of looping) of doing this?

Thanks in advance

citromatik

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Re: Fast string construction by johngg (Canon) on Apr 07, 2011 at 13:59 UTC
I wonder if you could use vec instead. I don't think you would need to initialise the string then as it would, I think, be automatically extended at need. I think it also stores bits in the same order as `pack q{N}, ...` knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ perl -E ' > vec( $str, 1, 32 ) = 0xfffff; > say unpack q{b}, $str; > vec( $str, 3, 32 ) = 0xf; > say unpack q{b}, $str;' 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000111100001111111111111111 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000111100001111111111111111000000 +0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000011110000 knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ perl -E ' > vec( $str, 0, 32 ) = 0xfffff; > say unpack q{b}, $str; > say unpack q{b}, pack q{N}, 0xfffff;' 00000000111100001111111111111111 00000000111100001111111111111111 knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ [download] I hope this is useful. Cheers, JohnGG	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Fast string construction by Eliya (Vicar) on Apr 07, 2011 at 13:15 UTC
You could also use the `x` operator (repetition): `$bin = "\0" x (4 * ($last_val+1));` [download] A benchmark would have to show whether it's more efficient, though...	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Fast string construction by ikegami (Patriarch) on Apr 07, 2011 at 16:06 UTC
Does it actually have to be a string, or does it just have to be efficient? You may want to consider Judy::L	[reply]
Re^2: Fast string construction by sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Apr 07, 2011 at 17:41 UTC
(Blink...) That’s what I love about this site, and about Perl. It’s a never-ending educational experience.	[reply]


"be consistent"
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