From xml-dev Thu Oct 15 15:27:39 2015 From: Shaun McCance Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 15:27:39 +0000 To: xml-dev Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Do long element names impact performance? Message-Id: <1444922859.2239.255.camel () recto> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=xml-dev&m=146143378703763 On Thu, 2015-10-15 at 15:53 +0100, Michael Kay wrote: > > Comparing two strings for equality is linear time on the length of the > > strings. > > Not necessarily. If most of the comparisons return false, it may be a > lot better than linear. It’s likely in many cases that the comparison > will start by comparing the string lengths, so you might get the > fastest comparison on average by having the lengths highly variable. Linear time is the upper bound, which is generally how algorithms are described. Whether comparing string lengths is a good idea depends on your string implementation. I'm a C programmer. For me, a string is a NULL-terminated char array. It costs time to compute a length, so I wouldn't bother. > But who says it’s string comparison that dominates? It might be the > effect on network latency, or the cost of doing compression. You need > to make measurements to find out. I agree 100% with this statement. Using single character element names is an absurd premature optimization. Always measure first. -- Shaun _______________________________________________________________________ XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS to support XML implementation and development. To minimize spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php