[RESOLVED] Alternative to Collection (be able to delete an item)

[dee-u]

I agree that an array of UDTs is probably not going to
give you any speed increase, because then you would
need to use some sort of ArrayDelete function which
would also slow things down.

One alternative to use Olaf Schmidt's Sorted Dictionary
object which keeps its collection sorted as items are
added, which allows a binary search.

http://www.thecommon.net/9.html

Option Explicit
Private Col As Collection
Private SD As dhSortedDictionary.cSortedDictionary
Private Declare Function GetTickCount Lib "kernel32" () As Long

Private Sub Form_Load()
 Dim i As Long, t As Long
 Dim Count As Long
 Set Col = New Collection
 Set SD = New cSortedDictionary
 Count = 100000
 For i = 1 To Count
  Col.Add "Item " & i, "k" & i
  SD.Add i, "Item " & i
 Next
 
 t = GetTickCount
 For i = Count \ 2 To Count
  Col.Remove "k" & i
 Next
 Debug.Print GetTickCount - t
 
 t = GetTickCount
 For i = Count \ 2 To Count
  SD.Remove i
 Next
 Debug.Print GetTickCount - t
 
End Sub

In my tests, the sorted dictionary code was more than twice as fast.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will look into it but from the look of things it does seem that I need another .dll to reference in order to utilize that object?

I think I can use CopyMemory to delete an item from an array but had a problem with it when I tested it a few hours ago, I will try to compare the speed if there will be any improvement with using arrays in this case.