performance - Do I create a duplicate function with slightly different algorithm, or use a slower, more general function? -
i've been advocate of dry principle: in other words, write code once , once. have function filters out data "latest unique report". in algorithm, function assumes incoming data sorted, making efficient. however, function potentially has handle data not sorted. better practice: having 1 general solution slower, or having 2 different functions, 1 being more efficient? edit: should make note while performance nice thing have, not critical application internal tool. the way put it sounds make function sorts data, , puts filtering function. so function filterdata(object data) { ... } function sortandfilterdata(object data) { // sorting ... // filtering filterdata(data); }