Efficiency of String Comparison

Using time (Click here) in tclsh, it looks like eq is more efficient when the two operands aren't equal. Maybe == can do two checks: the first as numeric and the second as strings if the first check doesn't match. Just a guess...

 

 

eq versus == is the same when the operands are identical strings

 

% time {expr {"a" eq "a"}} 1000000

 

1 microseconds per iteration

 

% time {expr {"a" == "a"}} 1000000

 

1 microseconds per iteration

 

 

eq versus == is shows eq is more efficient when the operands are not the same

 

% time {expr {"a" eq "b"}} 1000000

 

1 microseconds per iteration

 

% time {expr {"a" == "b"}} 1000000

 

2 microseconds per iteration

 

 

I'll try testing this in an iRule at some point as well.

 

 

Aaron