[fpc-pascal]Word count function

[Barry Kelly]

On Mon, 1 Oct 2001 16:41:16 -0400, James_Wilson at i2.com wrote:

> >>const
> >>  DELIMITERS = ' .,!?_-)}]>;:=@/\#9';
> >Replace the string by a set, this is much faster:
> >const
> >DELIMITERS : set of char = [' 
> ','.',',','!','?','_','-',')','}',']','>',';',':','=','@','/','\',#9];
> 
> >if StringToCheck [succ (Index)] in DELIMITERS then
> >should beat the pos call easily
> 
> Much faster? Boy, was that an understatement. [...] But I must confess 
> that I don't know exactly why there would be such a huge difference. Why 
> is a "set of char" soooo much faster then a const?

Because Pascal isn't C. :-) Pascal has this concept built in; Pos checks
for a string in another string, it isn't optimized for just a character.

> >while (Index < LineLength) and (CurrentChar in 
> ['A'..'Z','a'..'z','0'..'9']) do
> >might be faster as well
> 
> This was certainly cleaner looking then what I had posted,

What you posted looked typically C-ish alright.

-- Barry

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