title: Performance of string operations in Dyalog
body: <p>I have 2 questions related to comparing character vectors in Dyalog APL.
  The following code will compare character vectors one-by-one:</p>
  
  <pre><code>a←'ATCG'
  b←'GTCA'
  a=b
  </code></pre>
  
  <ul>
  <li>In order to speed up (<strong>in case of 2 vectors, as well as in case of comparing many vectors to a single vector</strong>), should I convert character vector to a numeric vector or it won't matter in APL (similar to comparing chars in C)?</li>
  <li>I am comparing DNA sequences (which may consist of letter from the <code>ATCG</code> alphabet only). Is there anything I can do to speed up various operations on such vectors?</li>
  </ul>