dattier(_at_)wwa(_dot_)com (David W. Tamkin) writes:
This probably is a question for someone who knows how to read the source
code, or for Stephen himself.
Now if you had said, "...someone who is able to _comprehend_ the source..."
then the two groups would be equal.
I have several conditions in my .procmailrc that search for an expression
that ends in a trailing space. In order not to delete the trailing space
accidentally, I write those conditions like this:
* whatever else[ ]
It occurred to me that the use of brackets might not be as efficient there
as parentheses:
* whatever else( )
or even
* whatever else ()
From my looking at the source, the last two should be equal in
efficiency, and except for a trace differance in regcomp time, should
match at the same speed as a solitary trailing blank. The character
class version "[ ]" will be slower, but how much slower I'm not going
to tell you (to paraphrase a Monty Python skit).
Of course, I suspect that neither you nor your sysadmin will ever
notice the differance in speed, and given that 99% of all systems are
I/O bound and not CPU bound, the system is incredibly unlikely to
notice either. I can't complain though, as I also go to various
extremes to eek out every last bit of possible performance. Ah well...
Philip Guenther