Errata....

On May 8, 3:31*pm, joeu2004 wrote:
So for the final comparison, I looped 20 times within the
call and averaged the time ignoring the first iteration.
*(I did not display the first-iteration time to confirm
that it is 2-5 times longer than the average of the other
iterations.)

Arrgghh! I meant: I __did__ display the first-iteration time.

Usually, I err by omitting "not" where it is important. (Doh!)
Adding "not" needlessly is a new wrinkle.

BTW, I wrote "55% faster" in one place and "54-66% faster" in
another. Although it's not important, the former is correct. I had
changed the implementation, which made the execution time consistent.
But when I edited the posting-in-progress, I fixed one comment, but
not the other.

'Nuf said. The horse is dead.