Re: feature request: gzip/bzip support for sort

[Bauke Jan Douma]

Paul Eggert wrote on 16-01-07 18:35:
> Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > So, with just one trial each, I see a 19% speed-up.
>
> Yaayyy!  That's good news.  Thanks for timing it.  I read your email
> just after talking with Dan (in person) about how we'd time it.  I
> just bought 1 TB worth of disk for my home computer and hadn't hooked
> it up yet, so was going to volunteer that, but you beat me to it.
>
> At this point to my mind the only question is how to put this change
> in, and whether to make it the default (with gzip, say).  Clearly it
> can lead to a big performance improvement with large sorts on modern
> machines.

How about files of 'average' size?

Someone said:

>  sort: Compress temporary files when doing large external sort/merges.
>     This improves performance when you can compress/uncompress faster than
>     you can read/write, which is common in these days of fast CPUs.

If this statement is true, you get the best of both worlds.
In that case I'd just make it the default (which is just that,
the default, and implies an option to choose the 'old' behavior).

bjd