Beginner's performance problem

[Mark Charsley]

In article <slrnab68mh.15p.gerhard at lilith.my-fqdn.de>, gerhard at bigfoot.de 
(Gerhard =?iso-8859-15?Q?H=E4ring?=) wrote:

> I haven't tried but an approach using the re module should be really
> fast, and shorter. Untested code follows:
> 
> import re
> names = ["ALGORITHM_CLASS", ...]
> 
> text = open("ThirteenThousandLines.sql").read()
> for name in names:
>     regex = re.compile(name, re.I) # case insensitive search for name
>     text = regex.sub(name, text)   # replace all occurences
> print text

Aha! I'd put off reading up on the regular expression stuff until later as 
I thought it just did searches, as opposed to also doing in-place 
replaces. Half an hour spent on the HOW-TO and I'm a lot better informed. 
Add a couple of r'\b' to the above, and I ought to be laughing. 

TVM to everyone who helped.

-- 

Mark - personal opinion only, could well be wrong, not representing 
company, don't sue us etc. etc.