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authorB. Watson <urchlay@slackware.uk>2025-12-01 04:37:29 -0500
committerB. Watson <urchlay@slackware.uk>2025-12-01 04:37:29 -0500
commit313050769f98ad6159f7399e5418d6608be5c531 (patch)
tree0b376dcb274d699465e23e01dcce3159fc9a5eda /src/alf.1
parent4842123935ecdf55e322d8661366d55ad77ab2a8 (diff)
downloadalftools-313050769f98ad6159f7399e5418d6608be5c531.tar.gz
Update performance section in alf man page.
Diffstat (limited to 'src/alf.1')
-rw-r--r--src/alf.122
1 files changed, 13 insertions, 9 deletions
diff --git a/src/alf.1 b/src/alf.1
index 569e980..3733915 100644
--- a/src/alf.1
+++ b/src/alf.1
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ level margin: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]]
.\" new: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]]
.in \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]]u
..
-.TH "ALF" 1 "2025-11-29" "0.2.1" "Urchlay's Atari 8-bit Tools"
+.TH "ALF" 1 "2025-12-01" "0.2.1" "Urchlay's Atari 8-bit Tools"
.SH NAME
alf \- create Atari 8-bit ALF archives
.\" RST source for alf(1) man page. Convert with:
@@ -195,14 +195,18 @@ compress/decompress such files, and you\(aqd have to have a hard disk and
a DOS capable of handling multi\-megabyte files...
.SS Performance
.sp
-Performance is \fIhorrible\fP\&. This shouldn\(aqt be a real problem on
-modern multi\-GHz CPU, especially since most Atari 8\-bit files are
-small (usually under 64KB). Interestingly, it\(aqs not O(n^2), it scales
-linearly, O(1): Compressing a 1.3MB text file takes 0.7 seconds on the
-author\(aqs (rather modest) Intel i7 workstation, and a file 10x as large
-takes approximately 10x as long (7 seconds). A 50KB file is almost
-instantaneous, 0.05 seconds, which is more typical of the files you\(aqd
-actually use this with.
+Performance is pretty good, as of alftools\-0.3.0. For small files
+like you\(aqd use on an Atari (up to 50KB), it\(aqs basically instantaneous
+(under 0.02 seconds) on the author\(aqs modest i7 workstation. For a 1MB
+text file, it takes 0.05 sec; for 1MB of random garbage, it\(aqs 0.1
+sec (and the resulting ALF file is 36% larger than the garbage).
+.sp
+By comparison, \fBzip\fP takes 0.6 seconds to compress the 1MB text file,
+and 0.03 sec for the 1MB randomness (and the compressed file is still
+larger than the input, but only by 312 bytes). The speed demon is \fBarc\fP:
+it compresses the text file in 0.03s, and it\(aqs smart enough to \fInot\fP
+compress the random garbage (it uses the \(aqstore\(aq method, which \fBalf\fP
+doesn\(aqt have).
.SS Timestamps
.sp
The date/time stamps stored in the archive are the \fBmtime\fPs of the