Can this script run faster?

Question

Hello,
The User dictionary does not always seem to work properly. The workaround is a script that creates discretionary hyphens for certain words.
The following script first deletes all discretionary hyphens in a document being converted from PageMaker to InDesign. It then searches the document for 1900+ words and inserts discretionary hyphens in those words. The script has two arrays with that many elements, one for the words to be searched for, the other with the discretionary hyphens for those words. The script works fine but it takes about a minute to cycle through a 100 page document and 1900+ words.
Is there a way to re-write this script so that it goes faster? Just curious.
Thanks,
Tom
#target InDesign
app.scriptPreferences.version = 5.0;
var myDoc = app.activeDocument;
var discrecHyphen = theGrepChanger(myDoc,"~-","");    
if(discrecHyphen.length > 0){
     alert("I just deleted "+discrecHyphen.length+" discretionary hyphens.");
     }//end if
else{
     alert("There were no discretionary hyphens in this document.");
     }//end else
var countWords = 0;
var numWords = "";
var wordsChanged = [];
var arrRawWords = ["humongous","array","of","thousand-plus","elements"];
var arrHyphenWords = ["hu~-mon~-gous","ar~-ray","of","thousand-~-plus","el~-e~-ments"];
for(var i =0; arrRawWords.length > i;i++){
     var numWords = theGrepChanger(myDoc,arrRawWords[i],arrHyphenWords[i]);
          if(numWords.length!=0){
               wordsChanged.push(arrRawWords[i]);
               }//end if
          countWords +=numWords.length;    
     }//end for i
alert ("I just added discretionary hyphens for " +countWords+" words.\r\rSweet, huh?!");
//*****functions*******
function theGrepChanger(docRef,grepFindIt,grepChangeIt){
     app.findGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;
     app.changeGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;
     app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = grepFindIt;
     app.changeGrepPreferences.changeTo = grepChangeIt;
     var arrGrepFindIt = myDoc.changeGrep();
     return arrGrepFindIt;
}//end theGrepChanger

Answer 1

OK, it's not the arrays. If you turn on the ESTK's profiler, you get this data:
Line
Time
Hits
1
1
1
4
6
1
5
1939
1
6
183
1
7
5
1
16
1
1
17
1
1
18
14
1
37
389785
1901
38
1981085
1901
39
2692741
1901
40
1197758
1901
41
1132369
1901
42
38969087
1901
43
2165
1901
44
1741
1901
45
9
2
I wrapped your script in a function() {} to see if it would report times in the array lookups, so it doesn't. Perhaps it's being optimized out. Anyhow, it spends all the time in line 42, which is the mydoc.changeGrep(). Oh, the document -- I placed Alice in Wonderland in 12pt Minion Pro Regular on 5.5"x8.5" pages, and then used as my raw words the first 1900 words in /usr/share/dict/words and as their hyphenation pairs inserted a ~ after every letter 'c'. Takes about 46 seconds to run.
You might also think it'd run faster if you opened the document with app.open(File("alice.indd",false) so it shows no window. This seems sort of true, but then ID crashes on the 872nd word ("accept", hyphed as "ac~c~ept"), probably one of the few words in my hyphenation list that actually shows up in Alice. Oh well... It also doesn't seem much faster -- takes about 20 seconds to get to 872, which seems about the same time as with the window open.