Wasteful Work

japhy — Tue, 05 Dec 2000 19:58:53 +0000

You might think it would be a good idea to do this:

$a = "jeff";
$b = "mary";
$c = "anna";
$all = join "", map "!$_", $a, $b, $c;
# $all is now "!jeff!mary!anna"
# we assume there are no !'s in the $a, $b, $c variables

if ($all =~ /![aeiou]/) {
  print "at least one of the names starts with a vowel\n";
}

But this does more work than is needed. You've just gone through each of your variables TWICE BEFORE you get to the regular expression! Compare that to:

for ($a, $b, $c) {
  if (/^[aeiou]/) {
    print "at least one of the names starts with a vowel\n";
    last;
  }
}

That is far more efficient.

fairhousing — Sun, 03 Dec 2000 07:25:21 +0000

depends on how many variable u have. if u have tons u may want to use foreach.

Mark Hensler — Sun, 03 Dec 2000 05:46:04 +0000

I don't thinks so.
I think you can only look for two strings inside of one, not one string inside of two.
Make sense?