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From: levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: cleaning up the net -- software solutions proposed
Message-ID: <300@ttrdc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Jul-85 21:30:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: ttrdc.300
Posted: Wed Jul 24 21:30:22 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Jul-85 07:35:07 EDT
References: <2961@nsc.UUCP> <331@phri.UUCP> <3013@nsc.UUCP> <289@ttrdc.UUCP> <3021@nsc.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T, Computer Systems Division, Skokie, IL
Lines: 41

chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) <3021@nsc.UUCP> had this to say
	about my proposal:

>In article <289@ttrdc.UUCP> levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes:
>>Suppose... for the purposes of munging the headers of incoming messages from
>>other machines, the restrictions were to be placed in environment variables
>>imposed by some man-readable shell script which then execs over to the news
>>handler?  Would that help at all?
>
>Process creation through fork() is one of the most expensive things you can
>do on a system. Some batching processes already require two fork() calls
>per netnews message (ugh!), most require at least one. Having it filter
>through a shell would probably be worse than trying to parse through a
>configuration file -- easier to code, but much worse on the performance.

Where does the big expense come from if the old news program were replaced
with a shell script of this kind:

munge_list=blahblahblah....
hit_list=blahblahblah...
blahblahblah=blahblahblah...
....
export munge_list
export hit_list
export blahblahblah...
...
exec new_news_program

which causes the new news program's process to replace the shell process which
was reading the script?  No forking is required and the new news program would
inherit all the environment variables, which would need no parsing to speak
of, and no file openings and closings (other than the shell script, obviously).
I was not talking about spawning a new process within a shell script.
-- 
 -------------------------------    Disclaimer:  The views contained herein are
|       dan levy | yvel nad      |  my own and are not at all those of my em-
|         an engihacker @        |  ployer, my pets, my plants, my boss, or the
| at&t computer systems division |  s.a. of any computer upon which I may hack.
|        skokie, illinois        |
|          "go for it"           |  Path: ..!ihnp4!ttrdc!levy
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