From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Received: from localhost by hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <2706>; Tue, 15 Jun 1993 16:45:16 -0400
To:	rc
Subject: Why I want read to be a builtin:
Date:	Tue, 15 Jun 1993 16:45:08 -0400
From:	Chris Siebenmann <cks>
Message-Id: <93Jun15.164516edt.2706@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu>

 read.sh is a 'while read; do : ; done' loop; line.sh is a 'while line
>/dev/null; do :; done' loop.

: hawkwind.utcs ; wc -l foo; time ./read.sh <foo; time ./line.sh <foo
    1000 foo
        0.8 real         0.5 user         0.2 sys  
       38.1 real         9.4 user        26.5 sys  

 Sometimes 'read' is what you need for something, and when it is, having
to run an external program for it can really kill performance. I'd really
rather write everything in rc, but when read comes up right now, I'm
forced to drop into sh.

	- cks