Subject: Re: [xsl] Question on translate() function From: "Michael Kay mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2017 21:45:52 -0000 |
> I have always presumed that translate() is faster than replace().[1] Probably. But you never know. It all depends how much effort has gone into the implementation. I did a little test: Saxon XQuery from the command line -qs:"declare variable $in as xs:string external; for $i in 1 to 1000 return translate($in||$i, '!@B#$%^&*()_+=', '##############')" in="a(b)@c" -o:test.out -t -repeat:20 Average execution time: 2.414801ms -qs:"declare variable $in as xs:string external; for $i in 1 to 1000 return replace($in||$i, '[!@B#$%^&*()_+=]', '#')" in="a(b)@c" -o:test.out -t -repeat:20 Average execution time: 4.025353ms But if the latter were a common idiom then it wouldn't be hard for the regex optimizer to generate an identical execution plan. Michael Kay Saxonica > I know that I, the mere XSLT programmer, am not supposed to worry my > pretty little head about optimization unless I actually have a > problem. And I know that if one of my students asked, that's what I > would answer: "You have 1 MiB of XML data, and that computer on your > lap would have been considered a supercomputer a mere two decades > ago. Yes, A is probably more efficient than B, but the number of > microseconds you save, even when added up over thousands of > iterations of this transformation, will end up being less time than > this conversation. Besides, we don't know what optimization the XSLT > engine is (or is not) doing -- for all we know it might be better at > optimizing B, even if un-optimized B is slower. So don't fret the > speed unless something is running too slow." > > But I can't help it, sometimes -- I'd really like to know if > translate() is significantly more efficient (computationally) than > replace() or not. > > Notes > ----- > [1] Not sure why I have this prejudice. Perhaps because translate() > was in XSLT1, but replace() was not; more likely because > replace() uses regular expressions, which I imagine take quite a > bit of computing; but most likely as a leftover from my IBM S360 > Assembler days, when a translate was done in a single machine > instruction. (Of course, it only operated on the 256 8-bit chars > of EBCDIC, not on Unicode.) > > >> translate($string ,'()''+-*$=' , '#') >> >> That means "replace '(' by '#', remove any occurrences of ')' or ' >> or '+' or '-' or '*' or '$' or '=', and leave anything else >> unchanged." >> >> If you want all the characters in the second argument to be >> replaced by '#' characters then you need to write >> >> translate($string ,'()''+-*$=' , '########') >> >> Alternatively, use the replace() function.
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