Sorry Jon, you timed boxing of LargeIntegers (and perhaps garbage  
collection of the boxes). In the below the number 10565520 is short for  
the interval I suggested, 1 to: (0.5 * SmallInteger maxVal) sqrt truncated  
* 456.

Almost factor 5, that's what I expected (asymptotically 6). My other  
demoes did almost nothing inside the loops.

So: should we care and ask the VM what she can do better than that ;-)

/Klaus

| time collection sum |
	collection := (1 to: 10565520) collect: [:none | 1].
	Smalltalk garbageCollect.
	time := Time millisecondsToRun: [
		sum := 0.
		1 to: collection size do: [:index |
			sum := sum + (collection at: index)]].
	sum.
	time
=> 2096

| time collection sum |
	collection := (1 to: 10565520) collect: [:none | 1].
	Smalltalk garbageCollect.
	time := Time millisecondsToRun: [sum := collection sum].
	sum.
	time
=> 9681

On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 22:09:55 +0200, Jon Hylands wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:35:01 +0200, "Klaus D. Witzel"
> <klaus.witzel at cobss.com> wrote:
>
>> > so you don't have to worry about trading off code
>> > clarity and re-use for performance.
>>
>> I cannot say that I understand this sentence (read it time and again,  
>> but
>> no clue). What's the connection.
>
> After having done some simple benchmarks, there doesn't appear to be much
> of a difference in the two techniques:
>
> 	| time collection sum |
> 	collection := (1 to: 100000) asOrderedCollection.
> 	Smalltalk garbageCollect.
> 	time := Time millisecondsToRun: [sum := collection sum].
> 	sum.
> 	time
>
> versus:
>
> 	| time collection sum |
> 	collection := (1 to: 100000) asOrderedCollection.
> 	Smalltalk garbageCollect.
> 	time := Time millisecondsToRun: [
> 		sum := 0.
> 		1 to: collection size do: [:index |
> 			sum := sum + (collection at: index)]].
> 	sum.
> 	time
>
> They both give more or less identical time (about 280 ms on my machine).
>
> It may be that this is a moot point in Squeak...
>
> Later,
> Jon
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>    Jon Hylands      Jon at huv.com      http://www.huv.com/jon
>
>   Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle)
>            http://www.huv.com
>
>