Can you do it faster? (parsing text file)

[Peter Hansen]

Marcus Stojek wrote:
> 
> Below you find an example that generates a dummy file and parses it.
> On my office PC it takes 16 seconds for preparing the token list and
> 16 seconds for parsing. This is too slow for me. 

Could you provide an upper limit you are willing to accept for the
speed of the program?  

I assume you have many such files.  How many?  What's the total length
of time you are willing to wait for the processing?  And how often does
the processing of each file have to be done?  Do you have the option
of just running the script at night automatically, or something creative
like that?  

-Peter