Re^2: Gods of perl

then she certainly forgot the -v switch.

I realize your reply was a joke, but the -v switch is not necessary. It only turns on verbose mode. In some cases, using -v is actually detrimental.

For example, when unpacking any modern Linux kernel, there are so many small files that it takes longer to print their name to the screen than it does to unpack them. Turning on -v causes it to take longer than it does otherwise.

Comment on Re^2: Gods of perl

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Re^3: Gods of perl by theorbtwo (Prior) on Nov 04, 2004 at 17:33 UTC
Actually, even on very fast connections, the time to download dwarfs the time to decompress, untar, or print the names. The best way is `tail -f -n+0 linux-n.n.n.tar.bz2\|bzcat -vv\|tar -xv`. Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Gods of perl by hlen (Beadle) on Nov 04, 2004 at 23:58 UTC
This is truth. But most people would be amazed at the actual time verbose output can cost your program. Printing is very expensive, I remember when coding a big branch-and-bound project for the cap-mst problem in college, it was responsible for like 70-80% of the total running time, which was huge. And I just couldn't believe it. So I think most people (specially non-programmers) have no idea how expensive it can be, and I can tell you I rarely use -v, unless I need it.	[reply]
Re^4: Gods of perl by nothingmuch (Priest) on Nov 17, 2004 at 09:04 UTC
Since I run my own proxy at home, I can assume that most downloads live in the cache, so I just do: `curl <URL> \| tar -jx or wget -O - <URL> \| tar -jx` [download] most of the time. -nuffin zz zZ Z Z #!perl	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Gods of perl by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Nov 04, 2004 at 17:40 UTC
Indeed. When the first Exabyte tape drives came out (like Hi-8 video tapes for those who don't remember,) it was recommended not to use `-v` on the particular platform I was using at the time because it caused some weird timing problem on the SCSI bus (probably due to a bug in the OS but that's another story.) /J\	[reply] [d/l]