From: Bob Alexander <bobalex@...>
Date: 2002-03-20T00:52:09+09:00
Subject: Re: file reading impossibly slow?

I'm jumping into this thread late, so apologies if I'm repeating well-known
information.

I've done quite a bit of scanning large text files with Ruby and have
observed:

o  Under Linux -- fine.
o  Under mswin32 -- *unreasonably* slow.
o  Under cygwin -- acceptable, much better than mswin32.

These observations were with Ruby 1.6.6, I think. By running reduced test
programs, I concluded that the fault lies in gets/readline.

Also, I've got code that compares directories (entry existance and dates)
for file syncing purposes, and the performance compares differently from
line-by-line reading:

o  Under Linux -- fine.
o  Under mswin32 -- fine.
o  Under cygwin -- *unreasonably* slow, slower than mswin32 by an order of
magnitude.


Bob