Problem with arrays

[Michel Boaventura]

Note: parts of this message were removed by the gateway to make it a legal Usenet post.

Hello,

I'm coding a program which implements the levenshtein distance between two
strings. It works, but very slowly.

I discover that the slowest line in the code is:

current[j] = m

where current is an array of Fixnum, and m is a Fixnum.

If i comment this line the program runs about 50 times faster.
If I change it to any other thing, like "current[j] = 1" it still running
fast.

I can't understand why "current[j] = 1" is faster than "current[j] = m".

Thanks,

Michel Boaventura

 

[Lloyd Linklater]

I discover that the slowest line in the code is:

current[j] = m

where current is an array of Fixnum, and m is a Fixnum.

If i comment this line the program runs about 50 times faster.
If I change it to any other thing, like "current[j] = 1" it still
running
fast.

I can't understand why "current[j] = 1" is faster than "current[j] = m".

As far as I can tell, it is not faster.

n = 10_000_000

start_time = Time.now
intarr = [1, 2, 3]
n.times {intarr[1] = n}
p Time.now - start_time

start_time = Time.now
intarr = [1, 2, 3]
n.times {intarr[1] = 5}
p Time.now - start_time

result:
3.438
3.437