stevens@hsi.UUCP (05/03/84)
We have modified cat(1) so that it uses reads and writes of the
optimal block size (512, 1024, or 4.2's st_blksize), instead of
using stdio (as the distributed version does). This is done only
if none of the command line arguments are specified. Measurements of
cat'ting a 5 Mbyte file to /dev/null show a decrease in user time
by a factor of 200 when the faster version is used.
While cat is not exactly the bottleneck of most systems, we use
it extensively for printing VERY large files on the printer,
which justified our "optimizing" it this way. If anyone is
interested in the diff's, please send me mail.
Richard Stevens
Health Systems International, New Haven, CT
{ decvax | hao | seismo | sdcsvax } ! kpno ! hsi ! stevens
ihnp4 ! hsi ! stevens