Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!celit!billd
From: billd@fps.com (Bill Davidson)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: Bug in users command
Message-ID: <14919@celit.fps.com>
Date: 21 Jan 91 05:49:41 GMT
References: <11104@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <14902@celit.fps.com> <19095:Jan1916:41:3291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Organization: FPS Computing Inc., San Diego CA
Lines: 34

In article <19095:Jan1916:41:3291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>In article <14902@celit.fps.com> billd@fps.com (Bill Davidson) writes:
>> #!/bin/sh
>> USERS=`who|sort|awk '{print $1}'`
>> echo $USERS
>
>Okay, timings: The perl version is about ten times as slow as the PD C
>version and the Berkeley C version. The shell script is about twice as
>slow as that. The perl version uses ten times as much memory as the C
>versions, and five times as much memory as the shell script.
>
>Now can someone give me one good reason that Berkeley should distribute
>the Perl or sh version rather than the C version?

No.  Not really.  I've always thought that "users" was a bit of a silly
program to have though.  I've always found "who" and "finger" to be
much more useful.

>30 lines of C code is hardly a maintenance problem

Agreed.  It would be nice if it worked properly though.

>and on a system with fifty undergraduates
>running automatic utmp checks every minute in the background, the
>difference between C and Perl is the difference between a 2% extra load
>and a 20% extra load.

Huh?  Your undergrads run "users" every minute?  REALLY????!!!!

Bizarre.

Would you explain this please?

--Bill Davidson