Comparing coding speeds.

[markSaunders]

Is anyone aware of a resource/paper etc. that may be useful for highlighting some of the fastest methods to use when coding.

I find myself wondering such as...

what are the advantages (in terms of efficiency) in using the [tt]Select Case[/tt] v the [tt]IF/Then/Else[/tt] construct.
When does is make more sense to switch between the two?
Is the use of the [tt]OR[/tt] command more efficient in terms of speed as well as program run-time.
Which is faster - the [tt]While/DO[/dd] construct, the use of a Label: or some other looping mechanism?

just wondering anyways.... Mark Saunders

 

[chiph]

There was an article in VBPJ a couple of years ago about performance, but it mainly addressed things like using "with" statements to speed access to OLE properties.

I would say that the Select..Case would be faster than if.then.else constructs, since the various conditions in the select..case could be pre-calculated by the compiler, and not evaluated at run-time. I think the if..then..elseif..endif has to evaluate every condition every time, and would be slower.

The while..wend might be a little slower than using a goto..label:, but I think it will pay off in program maintainability. The only time I use a goto is when I need to bail-out of a deep set of nested control structures. IOW, much like a on.error.goto. But I haven't found a compelling need for using a goto in about 3 years. The do..loop, while..wend makes for much cleaner code, and is easier to figure out.

It might be an interesting experiment for you to test some of this out. I would suggest you use a timer control to see how many iterations each programming structure can run through in a 3 minute period. More iterations would mean faster performance.

Chip H.