Re: Convert::ASN1 loading times

[John B. <joh...@ne...>]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Graham Barr wrote:

> However I am thinking, is this really worth it ? According to the
> above the parse is taking 0.122 seconds and the load takes 0.028 a
> saving of 0.1 seconds at startup time. Even you times only said it
> saved 0.24, is this extra maintenance (ie any change to the parse tree
> will need to be accounted for) really woth that extra 0.24 seconds ?

I'm not sure. On my home box I found it took around 60% of the startup
time (for Net::LDAP::ASN) that it did previously.

It is only of use (if at all) for those one-shot applications where
command latency is an issue. This is something I've noticed in the past
being a little annoying. For me, this 'feels' snappier when I run one-shot
commands which use Net::LDAP.

The potential maintenance burden is not something to be taken lightly, I
agree. It might be possible to code a little more defensively against
ASN.1 tree format changes and/or have a fallback method to parse the
definition if the load fails. I don't know if that would help or not.

What do other people think? I believe that there was some discussion a few
weeks back about Net::LDAP seeming much slower than C APIs when used as a
command line tool which I believe boiled down to startup times. Would
anyone involved in that care to try this patch and see if there is a
significant improvement for their application?

If the current format of the patch is problematic to employ, mail me
directly and I'll provide a more easily tried version.

regards,

jb