slow SCO UNIX sort (was Re: Feeping Creaturism (was ...))

[Jeff Liebermann]

In article <530 at sherpa.UUCP> rac at sherpa.UUCP (Roger Cornelius) writes:
>From article <1991Mar21.195435.3681 at kithrup.COM>, by sef at kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan):
>- In article <107 at comix.UUCP> jeffl at comix.UUCP (Jeff Liebermann) writes:
>->I was told by SCO
>->that it was not a problem because the sort program still yields valid
>->results.  
>
>SCO sent me a "fix" to the internationalization stuff in
>/usr/lib/lang.src, which "corrects" the problem.  Now my old 286
>XENIX sort is only 2.5 times faster than the UNIX 3.2.2 sort, instead
>of 4 times faster.  I guess I need to buy a 486 :-).
>Roger A. Cornelius          rac at sherpa.UUCP         uunet!sherpa!rac

My thanks for the idea.  Just for fun, I renamed /usr/lib/lang/
directory to /usr/lib/langgggg  so that sort wouldn't find it.  I
assumed that sort had some kind of internal default sort order.
Bingo!  Benchmarks as follows.  Now it's only 3 times as slow as 3.2.0
instead of 12 times as slow.

/bin/time  /bin/sort  /etc/termcap  > /dev/null

Using the 3.2.2  sort program with /usr/lib/lang/* in place.
real       21.6
user       21.4
sys         0.1

Using the 3.2.2  sort program with /usr/lib/lang renamed to /usr/lib/langgggg
real        4.1
user        3.9
sys         0.1

Using the 3.2.0  sort program with /usr/lib/lang/* in place.
real        1.4
user        0.8
sys         0.1

Using Xenix 2.3.3 sort program on similar hardware.  (386/25)
real        1.7
user        1.2
sys         0.0

I'm not sure of the side effects of this trick.  All of the sort
order options seem to function without suprise or crash.  I have
not tinkered with /usr/lib/lang  (see man pages for "locale").
Use at your own risk and discretion.

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