On Fri, 23 May 2003, Nigel Garvey
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>>It took me a while to see their point, but is their "advantage"
>>actually measurable?  I suppose with a g3/g4 running a zillion
>>iterations one might notice something...
>
>Well, true. Even on slower machines, you could write almost any old junk
>here - provided that the right answer came out at the other end -
>and the
>user would be none the wiser. But to scripters who find Emmanuel's
>solution interesting, elegant, satisfying, and admirable, the two
>optimisations would also be of interest. Hence my mention of them.

I didn't mean measurable in the sense of noticeable to the user
running the script once, I meant measurable in an oft-repeated,
experiemental, reproducible way.  So is it just a matter of
faith/aethetic belief on your part that they will necessarily be
faster/more elegant? ;-P  & no, it doesn't really matter.

>>2 groszy
>
>[Manfully resists the temptation to get sidetracked into a discussion of
>some very interesting Polish number grammar. :-)]

Mea culpa.  Polish was taught even less frequently than grammar,
when/where I went to school.

Jgnoramus

Selected from Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary":
ENTHUSIASM, n. -- A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of
repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.