On 9/19/2018 10:45 PM, Alan Braslau wrote:

Metapost does not have a very efficient mechanism for keeping objects in memory and does not have a very efficient or real array mechanism, rather it uses hashed lists.

fwiw, keeping objects as such in memory is quite ok, hashing is also ok, but indeed arrays are not really arrays but linked lists into the hash (which actually you can speed up a lot) so, here is a teaser for Alan (no lua magic here, just knowledge of how mp hashes): \dontleavehmode \testfeatureonce{1}{ \startMPcode numeric foo[]; def set_foo(expr c, s) = foo[c]:= s ; enddef ; def get_foo(expr c) = foo[c] enddef ; for i=1 upto 10000 : set_foo(i,i) ; endfor ; draw textext("set one dimensional"); \stopMPcode } \elapsedtime \blank \dontleavehmode \testfeatureonce{1}{ \startMPcode numeric n ; for i=1 upto 10000 : n := get_foo(i) ; endfor ; draw textext("get one dimensional"); \stopMPcode } \elapsedtime \blank \dontleavehmode \testfeatureonce{1}{ \startMPcode numeric foo[][][][]; def set_foo(expr c, s) = foo[c div 1000][c div 100][c div 10][c] := s ; enddef ; def get_foo(expr c) = foo[c div 1000][c div 100][c div 10][c] enddef ; for i=1 upto 10000 : set_foo(i,i) ; endfor ; numeric n ; for i=1 upto 10000 : n := get_foo(i) ; endfor ; draw textext("set four dimensional" ); \stopMPcode } \elapsedtime \blank \dontleavehmode \testfeatureonce{1}{ \startMPcode numeric n ; for i=1 upto 10000 : n := get_foo(i) ; endfor ; draw textext("get four dimensional"); \stopMPcode } \elapsedtime \blank Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------