Date:         Sat, 27 Oct 2001 01:02:13 +0100
Reply-To:     John Whittington <John.W@MEDISCIENCE.CO.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         John Whittington <John.W@MEDISCIENCE.CO.UK>
Subject:      Re: Character to numeric conversion
Comments: To: Dale McLerran <dmclerra@my-deja.com>
In-Reply-To:  <200110262058.f9QKwVF30778@mail24.bigmailbox.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 13:58 26/10/01 -0700, Dale McLerran wrote (in part):

>Under 6.12, the implicit conversions require 17.3 seconds while the
>explicit conversions require 17.56 seconds.  Under version 8.2, then
>implicit conversions require 7.9 seconds, while the explicit conversions
>require 6.2 seconds.
>
>Now, we can draw a couple of conclusions here:
>1) version 8.2 has increased performance remarkably over that of
>version 6.12 for both operations all of the operations examined
>here (looping along with implicit and explicit conversions)

Agreed.

>2) while there was an extremely small benefit of the implicit
>conversion under 6.12, the explicit conversion is more efficient
>under 8.2.

Also technically true, but let's put this in context.  Your tests seem to
indicate that this 'more efficient' is evidenced by a reduction of 1.7
seconds in the time taken to undertake one hundred million character to
numeric conversions - is that correct?

I think my position remains unchanged - that, whilst I fully support the
use of explicit conversions, for a number of reasons, I do not believe that
run-time 'efficiency' (speed) is a relevant factor in deciding whether or
not one wishes to do it!

Kind Regards


John

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