🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JAN.96Jan4144902@cora.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
           jan@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de "Jan Vorbrueggen" writes:

>In article <jgkDKMn2x.2KA@netcom.com> Joe Keane <jgk@netcom.com> writes:
>
>   What if GIF files didn't work between machines?  Or what about tar files?
>   What if you compress a file and can't uncompress it on a different machine?
>   People would say that someone is an incompetent bozo, and they'd be right.
>
>Irrelevant. These formats are expressly designed for interchange,

And since we're talking about data interchange they are relevant examples.

>and they
>carry a hefty performance penalty because of it.

Please explain where this overhead is. GIF is a compression format designed
to pack graphics images down to a more reasonable size. There is certainly
overhead in that but what portability/interchange considerations have created
a 'hefty penalty'? tar is a means of archiving many files into one. There
is overhead in that but, again, what portability/interchange considerations
have created significant overhead? There are issues concerning the file header
format but overheads for this sort of conversion are vanishingly
small. Note that tar is only a partial solution - it gets files from A
to B but doesn't make the files themselves portable, that needs to be done at
a different level. However this has nothing to do with any overheads of
tar itself.

>The X protocol is another
>example. For almost all other cases, the equivalent of a core dump is just
>fine. 

In my book if I want to get data from A to B a core dump (or 'the equivalent')
is not very helpful.

>   Performance is a fine excuse but, take it from me, it's just an excuse.
>
>Nonsense. Ever tried reading a 50 MByte array iteratively with a working set
>of 2 MB

Do you mean extracting 2MB of data from the 50MB file? If so you've simply
chosen a terrible interchange format for the data - there's simply no need
for that degree of overhead.

-- 
-----------------------------------------
Lawrence Kirby | fred@genesis.demon.co.uk
Wilts, England | 70734.126@compuserve.com
-----------------------------------------