[ On Wed, April  3, 1996 at 07:48:32 (-0500), John F. Woods wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: ncurses and terminfo 
>
> [The *name* collision problem (for local capabilities) is present in both
> schemes, it just bites at different times.]
> 
> The precompilation bit may have been a great idea for that 3B2 space-heater,
> but the time required to process termcap entries on a modern processor is
> trivial, especially since you can use $TERMCAP to avoid the linear search
> for the actual terminal entry -- though it probably takes less time on a
> lowly 486/33 to find the last entry in /etc/termcap than a 3B2 took to find
> the corresponding file in its tree.

If you're saying that modern machines should waste cycles just because
they can, then I don't like your attitude one little bit.

I do agree that it sould be useful to have a tic()-like routine in the
library for those cases where you would like to include the entire entry
in an environment variable.  This is usally only an issue for installs
and single user mode, of course, and I wouldn't expect to use it all of
the time.

I don't like wasting environment space unless absolutely necessary though.

One of these days I'll bring my 3b2 back out of hibernation and we can
compare benchmarks on your claim....  The current curses .db file
eliminates the old linear search problem, so we'd have to ditch that for
the tests....

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734			VE3TCP			robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets Of The Weird <woods@weird.com>