What is the fastest way to Parse a line in Delphi?

Question

I have a huge file that I must parse line by line. Speed is of the essence.

Example of a line:

Token-1   Here-is-the-Next-Token      La         


        

Answer 1

If speed is of the essence, custom code is the answer. Check out the Windows API that will map your file into memory. You can then just use a pointer to the next character to do your tokens, marching through as required.

This is my code for doing a mapping:

procedure TMyReader.InitialiseMapping(szFilename : string);
var
//  nError : DWORD;
    bGood : boolean;
begin
    bGood := False;
    m_hFile := CreateFile(PChar(szFilename), GENERIC_READ, 0, nil, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, 0);
    if m_hFile <> INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE then
    begin
        m_hMap := CreateFileMapping(m_hFile, nil, PAGE_READONLY, 0, 0, nil);
        if m_hMap <> 0 then
        begin
            m_pMemory := MapViewOfFile(m_hMap, FILE_MAP_READ, 0, 0, 0);
            if m_pMemory <> nil then
            begin
                htlArray := Pointer(Integer(m_pMemory) + m_dwDataPosition);
                bGood := True;
            end
            else
            begin
//              nError := GetLastError;
            end;
        end;
    end;
    if not bGood then
        raise Exception.Create('Unable to map token file into memory');
end;