Add/Strip’s suggested memory size is 360K. This should prove sufficient for most document processing. If many replacement strings are defined and enabled, or many characters are being inserted by replacement strings, more memory may need to be allocated.
Allocating more memory may improve performance for some files since A/S will be able to read the files in larger chunks. The input chunk size is determined dynamically during processing. Typically it will be approximately one fourth the size of the free memory, up to 128K. A/S will complain if it runs low on memory.
To display how much free memory is available and an estimated input chunk size, hold down the option key when choosing the About Add/Strip™… (renamed to Memory Info…) menu item. Too little memory will, at best, reduce performance; at worst, processing may be aborted.
As a rule, the more enabled replacement sets, the slower the document is processed. Ignoring case or using wildcards can slow processing considerably, depending on the contents of the replacement strings and the document being processed. Longer search strings are processed faster than short strings.
Altering case can also noticeably affect processing speed. Forcing words or sentences are slowest.
Of course, increased processing time is relative. On faster Macs, it may take more time to pick the document to process that it does to process it. Nevertheless, in most cases, using A/S to process a document is faster than doing the same tasks manually, using a word processor!
