On Sun, 10 Oct 2010 18:51:59 -0700, Alexander Solla
Although the list isn't huge, I would still rather get rid of the O(2*n) operation of turning it into maps at run-time.
I usually handle this as follows: 1) I create my data file in some human-friendly format (such as your list of tuples), so that I can easily edit it later, as required. 2) I write a program, a sort of preprocessor, that (a) loads the data from the human-friendly format into a processing-friendly structure, and then (b) serializes that structure into a file that's efficient to load at run time. (So, for example, lookups from the name of a country to its ISO codes can be handled via a Patricia structure; a Patricia structure is tedious to construct, but once constructed, is easy to serialize and de-serialize.) 3) The file containing the serialized structure is then linked into the rest of the "real" program as a source unit, where the serialized structure is represented as a constant (usually a string, but sometimes an array of numbers, etc.). If your build environment has a reasonable make-like tool, then the whole process is pretty automatic; you just modify the human-friendly file as often as you want, and the preprocessor is invoked automatically, as needed. -Steve Schafer