Speed of rc

[Dave Mason <dmason@plg.uwaterloo.ca>]

 Of course it was 10 seconds after I finished reading (and deleting)
John Mackin(sp?)'s note that I realized the problem:
	environment

rc will have a significantly larger environment (rc functions) than
sh, and many systems have *abysmal* exec performance because of the
time spent copying the environment.  I did some benchmarks on a MIPS
M/120 (13 Specmarks) running RiscOS and a National Semiconductor 32016
(.75 Specmarks) running Sys5r2, and I don't remember the exact
results, but execing with a 0K environment was about the expected
factor of 20 faster on the MIPS, and with a 5K environment it was
*much* slower - maybe a factor of only 4, and I calculated that in a
research O/S we were working on (although it never ran so I couldn't
verify this) the exec (with 5K environment) would run *faster* on the
NS32016 than the existing one on the M/120.

So, John: try a version of rc with an empty environment.  I suspect
the system times will be as fast as those for sh.

../Dave