From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
From: Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Clearing venti arena during install
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 26 Mar 2006 19:57:25 EST."
	<5032f8591800c63e04a9a8b18c1b63ea@swtch.com>
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 17:23:34 -0800
Message-Id: <20060327012334.7DA67294EF@mail.bitblocks.com>
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 225863fc-ead1-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

> > In the common (real-life) case, the test of the first word suffices.
> > The word-at-a-time scan can be made to run fairly fast, especially if
> > you have the option of first putting a non-zero word just after the
> > buffer, so that no explicit bounds test is necessary in the loop.
>
> Or temporarily unzeroing the last word in the buffer.

So if you are asked to allocate a disk block only to write a
block of zeroes, don't!  I can dig that!  That fills a hole
in my education.  Thanks guys!