Dominik Vogt <dominik.vogt_at_gmx.de> writes:
> On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 12:09:22PM -0500, Dan Espen wrote:
> > Gregg Dameron <gregg.dameron_at_lmco.com> writes:
> > > Mikhael Goikhman wrote:
> > >
> > > > Nowadays M4 preprocessing is not needed to write an ideal configuration
> .
> > > > m4 is pretty limited, it may be useful for simple things, but for more
> > > > complex needs you should write shell/perl scripts that create an fvwm
> > > > configuration on the fly, and read their output using PipeRead.
> > >
> > > I have used FvwmM4 to conditionally show/hide items in my TaskBar's Start
> men
> > > u
> > > tree on the fly. I have often wondered if using PipeRead with a script i
> s
> > > "better", but I wonder if the PipeRead approach results in a greater numb
> er o
> > > f
> > > Unix processes being forked, and so might be visibly slower on a highly
> > > CPU-bound system (as ours are). Can anyone confirm or deny?
> >
> > I doubt either approach could take much CPU time.
> >
> > In one case, m4 needs to be invoked, in the other case
> > a shell is invoked. I guess the trade off would be in
> > the amount of processing power each uses.
>
> Don't underestimate the time executing commands from a shell
> takes. When I first wrote the fvwm-menu-directory script, it
> called grep/sed/ls repeatedly and slowed down to a crawl for
> large directories (up to about 30 seconds to generate the menu for
> the /dev directory).
Actually, I had a similar experience with the generation of
a huge set of menus of images, but I didn't think there was a lot
of input in this case.
I meant to mention "small amount of input" in my reply.
--
Dan Espen E-mail: dane_at_mk.telcordia.com
444 Hoes Lane Room RRC 1C-214 Phone: (732) 699-5570
Piscataway, NJ 08854
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Received on Wed Mar 06 2002 - 13:01:33 GMT