Subject: Re: ELF slower than A_OUT?
To: Michael Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>
From: Gandhi woulda smacked you <greywolf@starwolf.com>
List: current-users
Date: 09/01/1999 13:52:34
Oh.  For those who were wondering:  This was on the SPARCstation,
specifically an IPX.

I ran the tests (a.out vs. ELF) on two identical machines down to
the point that /usr/share was local to both machines (each had their
own copy), the file on which I ran the test was /etc/passwd which
was the same length on both machines.

Moreover, it's startup time which is the problem, not run-time.
If I passed many files on the command line, file waited for about five
or six seconds and then processed the files as if there were no
other difficulties.

Most of the execution time differences are nowhere near this severe,
but in general the ELF times are higher than the a.out times.

Someone mentioned alignment issues.  Anyone else have a clue?

On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Michael Richardson wrote:

# 
#   Try it on identical files....
# 

Which I did.

A good technically explicit answer from a knowledgeable person would be a
plus.

				--*greywolf;
--
NetBSD: The power to Connect