Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!amdahl!rtech!gonzo!daveb
From: daveb@gonzo.UUCP (Dave Brower)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Making /usr/lib/uucp/paths a _binary_ database
Summary: What would you gain?
Keywords: pathalias UUCP smail
Message-ID: <490@gonzo.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jan 89 16:52:02 GMT
References: <486@fallst.UUCP>
Reply-To: daveb@gonzo.UUCP (Dave Brower)
Organization: Gonzo Media Group
Lines: 26

In article <486@fallst.UUCP> tkevans@fallst.UUCP (Tim Evans) writes:
>I'm not very proficient at C, but it seems that since 'paths' is
>essentially a two-field set of records it ought not be terribly
>hard to make 'pathalias' generate a binary database file.
>

The first question is "what you would gain?"  The only obvious overhead
in the existing format are the \n separator between records and a one
character field separator.

A binary format that was significantly smaller would also be much more
cpu and disk i/o intensive to access.  The existing format, using "look"
usually takes < 10 disk reads to locate a path or give up.

Straight compress(1)-ion would be incredcibly slow, since you'd need to
uncompress 1/2 the file on average to find a path.

Other schemes are possible, but most seem to me to bne performance
killers too.

-dB

-- 
If life was like the movies, the music would match the picture.

{sun,mtxinu,hoptoad}!rtech!gonzo!daveb		daveb@gonzo.uucp