Bash versions other than `release' are built with extensive extra arena
and allocation checking enabled in the bash malloc.
Thanks for pointing this out.
Here are the new results:
Bash 4.0, with bash malloc:
* eval `dircolors`: 0.138s
* source /etc/bash_completion: 0.735s
Bash 4.0, without bash malloc:
* eval `dircolors`: 0.135s (slightly slower than with debugging on, I
checked several times to be sure. This is very surprising...)
* source /etc/bash_completion: 0.702s
Without bash malloc, the results are close to the results with
debugging on. The results with bash malloc are far better now, but
still slightly behind those with libc malloc, on my computer.
In addition, in builtins/evalstring.c, line 271, an itrace call is not
enclosed between #if defined (DEBUG) and #endif, as it should be.
With my computer at normal speed (with the 'ondemand' governor),
starting a new shell (and running my .bashrc) now takes around 0.4s,
while it took 0.6s with Bash 3.2. This is enough to feel a difference!
Nicolas
