From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Nov 6 19:38:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id TAA05398 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 6 Nov 1997 19:38:42 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from capecod.net (poca55.capecod.net [205.230.13.55]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id TAA05391 for ; Thu, 6 Nov 1997 19:38:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from crtb@capecod.net) Received: (from crtb@localhost) by capecod.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA02551 for questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 6 Nov 1997 22:38:02 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 22:38:02 -0500 (EST) From: Chuck Message-Id: <199711070338.WAA02551@capecod.net> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Why is man so slow? Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk In FreeBSD-2.0.5 and now 2.2.2R, I find the man command to be ridiculously slow. If I time "zcat /usr/share/man/man1/tar.1.gz" it takes less than 1 sec. wall clock time. But "man tar" takes a full 20 seconds before anything appears. And /usr/share/man/man1/tar.1.gz is the only file in $MANPATH with a name matching "tar.*". It's only 4894 bytes long! Chuck Bacon -- crtb@capecod.net ABHOR SECRECY -- DEFEND PRIVACY PS: I think Tom Christiansen once wrote a man perl script. Any suggestions?