On Thu, 2 May 2002, at 9:40am, Alex Hewitt USG wrote: > Imagine if the OS were smart enough to recognize that you were copying to > /dev/null and would simply optimize that operation out of existence!
GNU tar does this. Seriously. If checks to see if the target device is /dev/null, and if so, skips some of the I/O operations. I discovered this when I wanted to exercise a disk, so I tried tar'ing it up to /dev/null, and what should have taken minutes completed in seconds! :-) -- Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
