>Could the jumptables be set up to look where they were called from and
>then patch their target into the instruction from whence they were
>called? There then would only be overhead on the first call from each
>point.
Boom. You've just dirtied that page, and it is no longer
shareable. So, instead of having > 200K shared between all
of your shells, you have closer to 800K (Who has less than
4 shells running at a time). Not a good thing (tm).
Also, if we ever unbreak Linux, writing to code space should trigger
a segmentation fault - it's like it is now because the estdio library
was broken, and wrote to the code.
IMHO, if you want speed, compile it to a .a, and link against the
new shared library whenever it comes out. You get shared libraries,
can still upgrade easily, but don't take the minimal performance
hit incurred by jump tables.
--
Microsoft is responsible for propogating the evils it calls DOS and Windows,
IBM for AIX (appropriately called Aches by those having to administer it), but neither is as bad as AT&T. Boycott AT&T, and let them know how you feel.
