Re: UNIX fseek time (was Re: Comparison of Alpha, MIPS and PA-RISC-II wanted)

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Article #10994

#10994

From: Mike Stefanik
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 18:40

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In an article, conor@lion.inmos.co.uk (Conor O'Neill) writes:
>But, given that 'fseek' is incredibly slow on most Unix systems,
>one could almost assume that Unix doesn't support random-access files.

What do you mean by this?  My understanding is that nothing is physically
being done by the call -- it simply sets the byte offset in the file table.
Is the copying of sizeof(off_t) bytes from user space to kernel space
what makes it "incredibly slow", in your opinion?

-- 
Mike Stefanik  mike@pacsoft.com  ...!uunet!pacsoft!mike  (909) 681-2623
Pacific Software Group, Riverside, CA

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!pacsoft!mike

References: <1992Dec21.194657.759@qb.rhein-main.de> <fW0DHHa@quack.sac.ca.us> <1992Dec24.112422.12434@titan.inmos.co.uk>

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!pacsoft!mike
From: mike@pacsoft.com (Mike Stefanik)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: UNIX fseek time (was Re: Comparison of Alpha, MIPS and PA-RISC-II wanted)
Message-ID: <1477@pacsoft.com>
Date: 27 Dec 92 18:40:38 GMT
References: <1992Dec21.194657.759@qb.rhein-main.de> <fW0DHHa@quack.sac.ca.us> <1992Dec24.112422.12434@titan.inmos.co.uk>
Organization: Pacific Software Group, Riverside, CA
Lines: 12

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