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From: gemini@homxb.UUCP (Rick Richardson)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: shell compiler?
Message-ID: <1439@homxb.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Apr-86 05:05:56 EST
Article-I.D.: homxb.1439
Posted: Wed Apr 16 05:05:56 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Apr-86 16:50:51 EST
References: <96@cstvax.UUCP>
Organization: PC Research, Inc.
Lines: 21

Scott Larnach writes:
> Have any of you wizards out there any idea of how much of the time a
> shell script spends being interpreted by the shell and how much it
> spends actually doing the work?  Would a program which turned a shell
> script into an equivalent C program (which would handle i/o
> redirections, fork/exec the appropriate commands, etc.) usefully
> improve the speed of my scripts?  Has anybody ever used such a beast?
> Is there one in the public domain?

Paul Ruel wrote such a compiler, called 'shacc', and marketed by
Concentric Associates (if still in business).  Look in an old copy
of UNIX World (Review?).

If the script does a lot of fork/exec as opposed to control flow,
you're not going to see much (any?) of an improvement.

Rick Richardson, PC Research, Inc. (201) 922-1134, (201) 834-1378 @ AT&T-CP
..!ihnp4!castor!{rer,pcrat!rer} <--Replies to here, not to homxb!gemini, please.

[Disclaimer: I've known Paul for years, and his work is good.  I have
no connection to Concentric Associates, and neither does Paul, these days]