koobas.hobune.stream
Optimising dictionary load (in Javascript)
I have a TextAsset, dictionary, which is a file containing a word per line, representing a scrabble-style word set. Currently I am iterating over it, like so:
var words = dictionary.text.Split("\n"[0]);
validWords = new Hashtable();
for (word in words) {
validWords[word] = true;
}
But the file is around 3MB and therefore takes several minutes to load. Ideally I would like to be able to store the dictionary contents in a lightweight binary format that could be loaded "in place". Is this possible at all?
Does anyone have any other suggestions?
I'm not sure if this will be relevant to your project but have you tried splitting the word file into a seperate file for each letter of the alphabet. i.e A.txt, B.txt etc.
Then if you are randomly getting a word, first pick a random letter from the alphabet. Then open that specific word file.
Alternatively if that doesn't work for you, have you looked into using a database engine of some sort?
That's an interesting idea, to sort of pre-hash the hash, but I'd really like to have the whole thing cached in memory at startup time, so that I can quickly query it during gameplay.
hi @gosub, i am also trying to implement dictionary.did you get solution from dictionary? if You know please share your idea.
Just to focus on one aspect, using Dictionary would be rather faster (and more typesafe) than Hashtable:
var words = dictionary.text.Split("\n"[0]);
validWords = new Dictionary.<String, boolean>();
for (word in words) {
validWords[word] = true;
}
I neglected to mention that I am coding in Javascript and afaik there is no support for the Dictionary type in JS.
@gosub: I know you're using JS; it was clear from the code you posted. I wouldn't have written my answer if there wasn't support for Dictionary in JS. (Assu$$anonymous$$g you're using at least Unity 3.0.) Use "import System.Collections.Generic" when using generics (List, Dictionary, etc.).
Thanks for the clarification @Eric5h5. I'm new to unity and don't know .NET or C# at all, so there are a lot of unknown unknowns for me atm. Please forgive my ignorance.
@gosub: see the docs here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229335(v=VS.90).aspx None of the $$anonymous$$icrosoft.* stuff would apply, of course, as well as some things like System.Drawing and System.Web, but most of the more generic stuff works, like text, regular expressions, I/O, xml, etc.
