Re: Autoloading of compctl from dbm database file.

[Fung-Chai Lim <fclim@singnet.com.sg>]

In <961130151728.ZM16366828@srf-75.nbn.com>
on Sat, 30 Nov 1996 15:16:26 -0800 (PST)
Bart Schaefer <schaefer@nbn.com> writes:

> Seems to me that this idea has "module" written on it, in large flashing
> purple neon letters.

> Compctls aren't very expensive to store either, are they?  The slow
> part of loading compctls and functions is parsing.  If we're going
> to introduce a database, we might as well also introduce a binary
> storage format and put pre-"compiled" functions, compctls, etc. in
> there.  Using a database just to store text that zsh then has to parse
> and execute anyway doesn't seem very helpful.

Then you have to worry about the "binary" database being shared by
systems of different architectures; distributed file systems are
quite ubiquitous.  The database must be portable over networks.

Yeah, with binary databases, I do see purple lights.

> Further -- I admit I haven't tried the patch -- doesn't attempting to
> autoload compctls, even from a database, slow down default completion
> a lot?

I do not notice any degradation, even with "big" compctl like the
one for `find'.  Remember, only one compctl is parsed at a time
with autoloading, unlike in startup files.

Regards,
fclim.