OpenEuphoria

Re: Leap Years

• Posted by Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen <nieuwen at XS4ALL.NL> Mar 03, 1998
• 770 views

|Craig wrote:
|>
|> Here's a lean version of leap year testing.  I don't know how it
|> compares to others on speed.
|> ----------------
|> global function leap_year(integer y)
|> -- return 1 for leap year, 0 for not
|>    return  ( integer(y/4)*(not integer(y/100)) + integer(y/400) )
|> end function
|> ----------------


Two things,
This can be done faster, as the optimization page of Lucius L. Hilley
stated. (and the optimize.doc in our \doc directory of Euphoria 2beta)

Remainders of values of 2^n can be done with and_bits, and it will be about
3 times faster:
    So, you would endup with:

    global function leap_year(integer y)
    -- return 1 for leap year, 0 for not
        if and_bits (3,y) then
            if remainder (y, 100) then
                if remainder (y, 400) then
                    return 1
                else
                    return 0
                end if
            else
                return 1
            end if
        else
            return 0
        end if
    end function

I haven't tested it, but it should be a lot faster.
Esspecially because I only call the other 2 remainder, when it is needed.
A short circuit like some1 asked, is a good idea, in an alternative syntax.

Whatabout this:

if length(s) thenif s[1] = 1 then

... stuf..

elsif length(d) thenif d[1] = 4 then

.. stuff..

end if

Here you state how the short-cut must be, however it is only a help-thingie,
which DOES bring more clearity to a program. Euphoria itself can never
decide to short-circuit, because you may call a routine after that, or do
something illegal, which simply does not add to the readablity of Euphoria.

And one more thing about optimizing by ex.exe:
When we have a long -if -elsif chain constantly checking the same variable,
could it be speed up a bit ?
It is now just as long as getting variable value, compare or whatever,
continue.

You might also be able to optimize a quick jump into the last slice used.
So that stuff like:

   for index = 1 to length(s) do
        s[index][1][2][3] = index^2        -- Yeah I know, I should use
power ()
   end for

This can be optimized a lot, first of: the loop can be optimized by Euphoria
to jump through the sequence s. (set step of a secondaity index to the space
of an element and have the secondairy index count along.
Withing the code, the position [2][3] can have a precalculated offset, into
the sequence s.
All the type checking (to prevent errors from happening in this kind of
dangerous trick) should be done before the loop. (as I think it should
always be done).

Optimize on loop-level bases, please..

Ralf