Saving Data in textstrings? in Developer Help

ID:273023
 
Jul 23 2009, 8:32 pm
How much more efficient is it to save data in a long text string, rather than a list. I'm using it to save some information about every player who logs in (it will be cleared periodically, but not often enough to prevent it from getting really long)
If I'm saving, say 4 or 5 variables about each player (or even 2 or 3), is it worthwhile to use the text approach, even if it's a little more work?
#1 Jul 23 2009, 8:52 pm
It isn't.
#2 Jul 23 2009, 9:06 pm
Using the params format (item=value;item2=value) still requires something like params2list() to read what's what.
#3 Jul 24 2009, 8:21 pm
In response to Kaiochao (#2)
Well, I only need to read manageable parts, occassionally. Basically my two [edit: make that 3] options are:

1) A list of datums, one per player (I'm imagining maybe 200 or so, depending on how often I clear it), with 3 or 4 variable each, and once and awhile I need to pull out one of those datums and use it's variables.

2) A textstring, with a part for each player, identified by key, with several parameters for each, and occasionally I pull out a part of the string and produce variables from it. I never need to work with the entire string at once, so I never would convert the entire thing into parameters, just small parts.

3) I just thought that I could use savefiles, but that really seems like a hassle, for just a few variables.

I'd like to think that method 2 is more efficient than method 1...
#4 Jul 24 2009, 8:26 pm
In response to Chessmaster_19 (#3)
Chessmaster_19 wrote:
Well, I only need to read manageable parts, occassionally. Basically my two [edit: make that 3] options are:

1) A list of datums, one per player (I'm imagining maybe 200 or so, depending on how often I clear it), with 3 or 4 variable each, and once and awhile I need to pull out one of those datums and use it's variables.

2) A textstring, with a part for each player, identified by key, with several parameters for each, and occasionally I pull out a part of the string and produce variables from it. I never need to work with the entire string at once, so I never would convert the entire thing into parameters, just small parts.

3) I just thought that I could use savefiles, but that really seems like a hassle, for just a few variables.

I'd like to think that method 2 is more efficient than method 1...

It's not. Why would you think that?
#5 Jul 24 2009, 8:42 pm
In response to Garthor (#4)
Well, it just seems wasteful to have several hundred datums around. I know datums are fairly light-weight, but they still have some unnecessary variables.