Wladimir & I exchanged a little info back & forth today and I am now making changes (slowly) to the main EasyList filter.
You will probably notice in the one to five days it takes to get updated (at least if you update from adblockplus.org) that the EasyList is starting to look a little different .... actually the strings are getting a bit longer.
Wladimir has determined that I should make at least 8 unbroken characters per string. Adblock Plus will create a 'shortcut' with any 'simple expression' filter string using at least 8 unbroken characters ... anything less or using regexps and it will not (the 'patterns.ini' file in the 'adblockplus' directory of your Firefox profile actually tell you which ones have a shortcut and what it is).
The beauty of shortcutting a string is that it only needs to load once (if I'm saying this correctly ... Wladimir can chew me out if I'm wrong). Any time a simple expression filter (which is what I use exclusively and is preferred for use in ADP) meeets this criteria, the filter can parse at a much faster rate when it is needed multiple times. If the expressions are too short ... or if they are regular expressions (regexps), the string will not work in this manner ... the filter string need to be re-read over and over each time.
So, according to Wladimir, by actually making the filter larger and the strings longer to create 8 succesive characters, it will actually work faster.
So, I'm doing what I can and have actually changed, removed, and edited some strings ... but I need people to keep an eye out for anything not working right, false-positives, or missed blocks.
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