> The general idea here is that forking a new process is not usually
> (ever?) the bottleneck, if you have a script that needs to run faster,
> there's other overhead to trim first, and if you really need to, you can:
> (giving up line at a time response).
>
> ifs=($nl)
> lines=`{cat}
> for($lines as $line){...}
i hate to be pedantic, but i see 2 syntax errors, a
unintended side effect and an extra set of parens.
ifs is not a list; it is a set of characters like strpbrk(2).
i think this is what you want
for(line in `{ifs=$nl cat}){...}
but i have no idea why one would avoid the read
idiom. for large input, forking off a read for each
line keeps the memory footprint O(1).
if not dealing with large input, then a few forks don't
matter.
> On the other hand, echo -n is a wart. I wonder, does echo '' -n work?
> (My plan9 machine is off and far away.)
as per plan 9 tradition, the first non-option terminates
option processing. lindon's echon is not required. giving
echo -n as its first argument works fine.
- erik
