mclure@sri-unix (06/29/82)
Has anyone considered a more efficient implementation of the history() routine in inews? Namely, hashing. The current quadratic nature tends to bring Unix to a crawl. Trimming back the file is only a partial solution. Stuart
mark (06/29/82)
The problem with hashing is that there is no universal hash software. libdbm is only on V7 and 4BSD, not USG. There is a B-tree package available inside the labs, but it can't be distributed, and isn't universal even inside. Probably what will happen is that libdbm will be used and the entire source will become part of netnews, much like index/rindex now. Certainly this issue needs attention. By the way, I can't think of any reason why 2.7 would suddenly be slower. There is a fork bug introduced with recordings that is fixed in 2.9, but this only makes it SEEM slower when posting directly from the terminal. rnews coming in wouldn't be affected. Mar