Re: [9fans] impressive

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

On Mon Apr 24 21:16:57 CDT 2006, dfawcus@cisco.com wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 02:37:21PM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
> > This program:
> >
> > compiles to a 512KB binary on linux with -static
>
> glibc is bloated,  printf and strtoul are also quite large.  [..,]

noooo.... you're kidding, right?

this is the gnu fallacy in action.  nobody can find a theoretical algorithmic weakness,
so it must be better. (my take: if it's sufficiently complicated, it can't be
criticized by anybody who understands it.  proof: nobody has enough time to understand
it. qed.)

	; wc -l /sys/src/sys/src/libc/port/strstr.c
	29 /sys/src/libc/port/strstr.c

	; wc -l $home/glibc-2.3.5/sysdeps/generic/strstr.c
	123 /home/quanstro/glibc-2.3.5/sysdeps/generic/strstr.c

the gnu strstr is really slick and exploits many tricks, but it's 4-5x bigger
than the plan 9 version.  i would venture to guess that for the common case
of smallish searches on typically cache-bound systems, the plan 9 version
beats the pants off the glibc version.  (and, if you follow the thinking through
to a whole library, you start thinking that dynamic libraries and other complicated
cheats are good ideas.)

- erik