For loops and Iterator speeds

[Daniel]

Quick question. Does anyone know which is faster, for loops or iterators? Or are they the same? Thanks in advance.

 

[SephirothSpawn]

I imagine them to work the same speed really. It all depends on the data being looped through.

But then again, I don't know about all the technical stuff like this.

 

[exseiken]

To me, evaluating a condition (especially one that compare numbers) appears to be far simpler than iterating through an array that could be anything from a simple array to a linked list, which probably cause a bit of of overhead due to casting and polymorphism... But I do not know the inner working of the Ruby interpreter so I cannot be sure.

But Ruby was meant to be simple, not fast... and it will never really be fast no matter how optimised the scripts are. (Although for game logic and text parsing it is fast enough.) Optimizing Ruby code for speed is a waste of time if you ask me. And if it makes the script unreadable, it is actually very bad.

If you have slow code and you know it could be run faster, it might be a problem with the algorithm, not with the way it has been implemented.