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.