Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 17 Feb 1997 18:54:44 -0500 (EST) | From | yuri mironoff <> | Subject | Re: Machine friendly format for /proc files |
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On Mon, 17 Feb 1997, Snow Cat wrote:
> Wouldn't ioctl support for /proc files be more logical?
You've got my vote for that. Its fine for a human to browse through /proc, but programs shouldn't have to rely on the format of /proc file entries to work properly - for the simple reason that its WASTEFUL to convert binary information to text just to convert the text back to binary in order to use it, not to mention any file descriptors opened in the process.
As an example consider the infamous 'top' utility. It eats 3% of the CPU to display a subset (whatever fits on screen) of 44 processes. This is on a Pentium Pro 200. A similar program on HP-UX (a much slower OS according to all the benchmarks) never exceeds 1% - and thats with 350 processes.
Some people out there have 4 way 200Mhz Pentium Pros - but I have one CPU with 6 hungry programmers hogging every valuable cycle - and I cant afford to waste any of it.
Why not develop a system call for obtaining process info? The same goes for IO. Wouldn't it be nice to have a STANDARD api for querrying all devices that do IO? Imagine all the utilities that could be written to take advantage of information like this?
Regards,
Y.
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