Re: Searching for Fastest Way to Input a File
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) May 19, 2014
- 2438 views
Working with a data set of a certain size does not imply loading it in its entirety into something like a sequence. If you think you need to do this, you need to realize you're doing it wrong and that there is a better way.
Well, arrays are "something like a sequence", and memory-mapping files are sort of like arrays. And mmap'ing a large file to operate on it is widely considered an efficent way to deal with files.
The whole point is about flexibility and future-proofing. You never know what'll turn out to be useful later on. And you never know what'll still be around then either. (Just think of those stories from folklore about COBOL programmers who figured their programs would be long gone by the year 2000, only for thousands of dollars to be spent in order to make them Y2K-bug free.)
I'm not going to stop you, but I reserve the right to mock people who come back complaining about how terrible things get when you use ginormous sequences.
On the flip side, predicting the future accurately is pretty tough too. Just think of those in the past who thought we'd have Moon colonies and rocket cars by the 1990s.
So, that seems more than fair. 
