Semiconductor & Computer Engineering
mIRC is not considered a fast language and, more often than not, the easiest implementation is not the fastest.
The following tips will help to increase the execution speed of a script. Most will have a very marginal speed advantage and may not be worth consideration outside of long-running script blocks such as loops.
Contents
Alias Bypassing
When calling any form of command or identifer mIRC will attempt to find a scripted version prior to looking for a native equivalent. This functionality can be bypassed by prefixing commands with ! and by inserting a ~ after the $ of identifers.
This bypasses mIRC looking for a scripted echo alias:
!echo -a example1 .!echo -a example2
This bypasses mIRC looking for a scripted me alias1:
echo -a $~me
1: Even though mIRC will use its own native identifers over custom aliases of the same name, there is still some pre-evaluation that can be bypassed using the above method.
Conditions
Best to worst:
if (condition) command
if condition { command }
if (condition) { command }
if-else vs $iif()
$iif() is much slower than using an if-else statement. When $iif() is encounter it is first rearranged into an if-else statement and the result is evaluated.
Best to worst:
var %result = condition_false_value if (condition) var %result = condition_true_value
if (condition) var %result = condition_true_value else var %result = condition_false_value
var %result = $iif(condition, condition_true_value, condition_false_value)
/tokenize & $n vs $gettok()
For successive1 calls against the same data, it is faster to use /tokenize and $n over $gettok().
;; faster than using $gettok(a b c, 1, 32) $gettok(a b c, 2, 32) tokenize 32 a b c echo -a $1 $2
1: even with just two references against the same input, tokenizing is faster than using $gettok
[]'s vs $() vs $eval
Best to worst:
[ eval_statement ]
$(eval_statement, 2)
$eval(eval_statement, 2)