Re: Speed of rc

[John (Most modern computers would break if you stood on them) Mackin <john@ civil.su.oz.au>]

Chris,

Fascinating!  I want to work out what is going on here.  The first
question, and I am really in little doubt as to the answer, is: was
that rc-1.4?  You didn't say, and I know some earlier versions didn't
do the redundant stat() call that appears to be at the bottom of the
extra system time I am seeing.  Note that you, like me, see substantially
larger user times with sh than with rc; the difference was that I saw
larger system times with rc than with sh, whereas in your tests they
are on a par.

Given that you were using 1.4, I'd say the next logical step (and
this is just a suggestion, feel free to make your own if you don't like
this one) is I'll give you my rc-1.4 binary one way or another
(I can put it up for anon ftp here, probably best) and you can test
that binary under the same conditions as the others.  Let me know
what you think.

Puzzled, but
OK,
John.