http://bugzilla.spamassassin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3954
------- Additional Comments From [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2004-11-05 15:26 -------
Subject: Re: Make MIME::Base64 a required module
-1 (a) not entirely possible (b) unnecessary requirement (c) may be
the wrong optimization
(a) Our base64->uuencode method is a well-known way to decode
base64-encoded data (and the decoding itself is very fast in terms
of perl ops). More importantly, there are cases where we do that
even when MIME::Base64 is available because MIME::Base64 doesn't
decode malformed base64 like most common mail programs.
(b) It's fast enough as-is. I took every single base64 spam I've
received in the last 30 days (633 out of 9010) and base64 decoding
without MIME::Base64 took 0.09% of time for those 633 messages, or
0.006% of time for the entire set.
(c) It seems like it *might* even be faster without MIME::Base64 due to
the contortions needed to use it. Profiles done after running
through the messages once:
Profile of the 633 messages with MIME::Base64:
User+System Time = 110.4627 Seconds
Exclusive Times
%Time ExclSec CumulS #Calls sec/call Csec/c Name
0.16 0.178 0.177 576 0.0003 0.0003
Mail::SpamAssassin::Util::base64_decode
0.00 0.000 -0.000 546 0.0000 -0.000 MIME::Base64::decode_base64
Profile of the 633 messages without MIME::Base64:
User+System Time = 110.0956 Seconds
Exclusive Times
%Time ExclSec CumulS #Calls sec/call Csec/c Name
0.09 0.094 0.094 576 0.0002 0.0002
Mail::SpamAssassin::Util::base64_decode
That speed-up might not hold up for longer base64 regions such as
viruses and such that the parser could possibly be used to decode. We'd
need to test it.
When I wrote the routine, I didn't really consider that MIME::Base64
might be slower, but I did optimize the hell out of it otherwise. I
could look at further optimizations, but it's so low on the profile,
it's probably not worth the effort.
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