On 2004-11-02, Peter Simons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > John Goerzen writes: > > >> Read and process the file in blocks: > > > I don't think that would really save much memory [...] > > Given that the block-oriented approach has constant space > requirements, I am fairly confident it would save memory.
Perhaps a bit, but not a significant amount. > > and in fact, would likely just make the code a lot more > > complex. It seems like a simple wrapper around > > hGetContents over a file that uses block buffering would > > suffice. > > Either your algorithm can process the input in blocks or it > cannot. If it can, it doesn't make one bit a difference if > you do I/O in blocks, because your algorithm processes > blocks anyway. If your algorithm is *not* capable of Yes it does. If you don't set block buffering, GHC will call read() separately for *every* single character. (I've straced stuff!) This is a huge performance penalty for large files. It's a lot more efficient if you set block buffering in your input, even if you are using interact and lines or words to process it. -- John _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
