Considerations on an Optimization
An application – actually, successive pair of applications – is meant to process (in the end) about three hundred or so entries to convert a simple markup into complex LaTeX markup. It also enhances the data with information drawn from a flat-file text database (i.e. literally a set of .txt files in a single directory). This application was originally written in rust, which is not my favourite language, but one worth exercising to a degree. The rust application covered a limited subdomain, and generally avoided unsafe rust code, although in some cases it had to use cell mechanisms which converted compile-time to runtime safety. The initial iteration had the text database as one large file, with some logic allowing for extended seeking through chapters. It soon became apparent, after extending my dataset to about twenty or so items, that this was going to result in an unacceptable runtime — it was taking longer to process than the later TeX processing took, and although in theory this w...