From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Mar 5 19:19:55 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2968B16A4CE for ; Fri, 5 Mar 2004 19:19:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from avocet.mail.pas.earthlink.net (avocet.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0631D43D46 for ; Fri, 5 Mar 2004 19:19:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rsidd@online.fr) Received: from user-0cdfels.cable.mindspring.com ([24.215.186.188] helo=papagena.rockefeller.edu) by avocet.mail.pas.earthlink.net with smtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 1AzSLy-0006Nf-00 for chat@freebsd.org; Fri, 05 Mar 2004 19:19:54 -0800 Received: (qmail 3876 invoked by uid 1002); 6 Mar 2004 03:19:54 -0000 Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 22:19:54 -0500 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Chris Pressey Message-ID: <20040306031954.GA3713@online.fr> References: <20040306012556.GA2554@online.fr> <200403060245.05790.dgw@liwest.at> <1078538135.40492f9742e70@imp4-q.free.fr> <20040305192200.7a377e92.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040305192200.7a377e92.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> X-Operating-System: Linux 2.6.3 i686 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i cc: dgw@liwest.at cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Most wanted X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 06 Mar 2004 03:19:55 -0000 Chris Pressey said on Mar 5, 2004 at 19:22:00: > On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 02:55:35 +0100 > Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > > Daniela wrote: > > > I like doing AI programming, that's numbercrunching most of the time. > > > > > > A compiler can't, for example, know whether you need to have zero returned > > > from the atoi() function when the user entered nonsense. If you don't need to > > > check whether the user has entered a valid number, you can do it *much* > > > faster. > > > > Excellent example. Here you're limited by the speed of the fingers of > > the user who's entering the data, so there's *absolutely no point* in > > optimising the atoi() function in this way. (Or if you're reading from > > the disk, the disk I/O will be the bottleneck, though it's admittedly > > faster than fingers.) > > I don't understand your point... atoi() is not an I/O function. Where did the "a" in the "atoi" come from? The point is that some very slow i/o routine gives you an ascii string (that's the only reason you'd ever need to deal with an ascii string), and then the C library's atoi() converts that to an integer. Now, what's the advantage of optimising atoi()? R