[thelist] CF Arrays vs. List Tip

[Joshua Olson]

<tip type="ColdFusion" author="Joshua Olson">
ColdFusion Array handling is *much* faster than list functions.  If you have
an loop that iterates through a list and uses ListGetAt in every loop, you
may find a significant speed increase by creating an array before the loop
ListToArray and using indexes instead.  The longer the lists, the more
profound the disparity becomes.

Example:

Assume you have two long lists of the same length and you want to display
elements from both lists side by side.

slow method
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<cfloop from="1" to="#ListLen(longList)#" index="i">
  <cfset text1 = ListGetAt(long, i)>
  <cfset text2 = ListGetAt(complementaryList, i)>
  #text1# - #text2#<br>
</cfloop>

faster method
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<cfset longArray = ListToArray(longList)>
<cfset complementaryArray = ListToArray(complementaryList)>

<cfloop index="i" from="1" to="#ArrayLen(longArray)#">
  #longArray[i]# - #complementaryArray[i]#<br>
</cfloop>

</tip>