> > > UNIX admin wrote: > > And the GNU tools are mostly inferior products in > terms of > > performance: for example, GNU AWK is slower than > System V AWK (this > > has been chewed into oblivion on the Usenet); or
There's an interesting tradeoff with GNU awk though; back in '03, I'd run into problems patching because the field count for regular /usr/bin/awk was too high. So just for grins, I tried out the various versions. /usr/bin/awk aka oawk failed with 100 fields nawk failed with 500 fields /usr/xpg4/bin/awk failed with 4001 fields The limits on one or both of the first two at least have been raised a little since then, but nowhere near the following: GNU awk bogged down somewhere between 2 million and 4 million fields! I think if I'd had more RAM on the box in question, it would have kept going further. Sometimes slower is worth it if it will handle your input. And the folks that did GNU awk took some pains with compatibility, including communicating with the original awk developers to clarify some of the finer points. Some of the GNU apps are inferior (GNU tar comes to mind). But GNU awk has done well for me, even if it's a little slower. My biggest problem with the entire suite of GNU apps is that they're very inconsistent in quality and standards compliance. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
