On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 10:38 AM Paul Eggert <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 10/14/21 3:47 AM, Gisle Vanem wrote: > > Maybe a memory-mapped I/O in GNU-diff > > could improve the speed? > > I tried this loooong ago (circa 1990) with either GNU grep or GNU diff > (can't remember which) and it made performance worse. Of course it's > platform-dependent.
That was 31 years ago! (Linux kernel 1.0 was released in 1994.) ripgrep uses mmap sometimes, depending on heuristics, and there are reports online that it is sometimes much faster. For example, this Hacker News claims 13x improvement in one case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19806804
