comment on

If sadmanface hadn't worried about speed, he wouldn't have asked that question, I assume.

Since I couldn't give an algorithm that is faster in the case of small numbers, I gave one that is very much faster for big numbers. He can chose whatever is best for his application.

As to the difference of absolute times, I can just say that it scales with number of times the algorithm is run. Again with can just try to credit sadfaceman some intelligence and assume he wouldn't ask his question about this particular item of code if it wasn't of importance. After all, it cost him some time to ask as well.

Yes, it's a good idea to benchmark, but it still don't think that's a reason to recommend an algorithm that scales bad in the general case, unless you state its limits. And I don't think it's bad to recommend an algorithm that scales well in the general case, even it might be a bit slower for small data structures.

In reply to Re^4: find closest element of array without going over by moritz
in thread find closest element of array without going over by sadfaceman

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