[pinkcan]

> uses half the memory

this is false

> two orders of magnitude faster

incorrect

> doesn't let your users DOS you by triggering huge file reads on each request.

I understood what you were trying to do on your first reply – "Prolly don't want to read the file on every request though" – no need to repeat yourself.

plese remember:

1. it's pseudo code, the optimisation is superfluous

2. it never ran, the optimisation is useless

[marginalia_nu]

Optimization is never useless. Even code that doesn't run is best written in a resource-effective manner.

[pinkcan]

unless the intent of the code is to demonstrate some implementation where the optimisations would be distracting