TODO hardlink performance optimizations

[John Van Essen]

On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 22:33:06 -0800, Wayne Davison <wayned at samba.org> wrote:
> 
> I'd suggest also changing the last line of the function:
> 
> -        return file_compare(&f1, &f2);
> +        return file_compare(f1p, f2p);
> 
> This is because the old way asks the compiler to take the address of f1
> and f2, thus forcing them to become real stack variables.  Changing the
> code to use the passed-in f1p and f2p allows the compiler to leave both
> f1 and f2 as registers (if possible).

Good point, but I have an even better suggestion, now that I
finally understand the nuts and bolts of all the hlink.c code.

The file_compare() is invoked when the dev and inode values match
in order to present a consistent sorting order during the sort.

There is no compelling reason to have the hlink list be sorted
alphabetically.  It just has to sort consistently.  So the final
comparison can be done on the addresses of the file_structs,
since they are not moved around and will remain constant:

        return ( ( f1 < f2 ) ? -1 : ( f1 > f2 ) );

(Unsure if the code is right, but you get my drift.)

For filesets with many hardlinks, this will use less CPU time.
-- 
        John Van Essen  Univ of MN Alumnus  <vanes002 at umn.edu>