Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watdcsu!dmurdoch
From: dmurdoch@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (D.J. Murdoch - Statistics)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Is uncompression faster than disk I/O?
Keywords: compress zoo arc I/O speed
Message-ID: <5434@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Date: 17 Jan 89 16:07:37 GMT
References: <14227@princeton.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: dmurdoch@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (D.J. Murdoch - Statistics)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 16

In article <14227@princeton.Princeton.EDU> nr@princeton.Princeton.EDU (Norman Ramsey) writes:
>
>Someone suggested to me that it might pay off to store my data files
>in compressed format, then uncompress them when I get ready to use
>them.  The claim was that uncompression is faster than the associated
>disk I/O.  so here's the $64 question: has anybody substantiated this
>claim for IBM PC, XT, AT, or PS/2  (remember computation and I/O
>speeds differ on these machines, so your mileage may vary)

I've found this to be true in one very special case:  searching a lot of
tiny files for text.  I've got about 200 files containing 1-2K each, and
found that Borland's GREP on all the little files takes about twice as long 
as Buerg's ARCF on a big ARC file.  I'm using a 16Mhz 386 clone with a 28ms 
disk.

Duncan Murdoch