>>>>> "Gandhi" == Gandhi woulda smacked you <greywolf@starwolf.com> writes:
    Gandhi> I ran the tests (a.out vs. ELF) on two identical machines down to
    Gandhi> the point that /usr/share was local to both machines (each had
    Gandhi> their own copy), the file on which I ran the test was /etc/passwd
    Gandhi> which was the same length on both machines.

  But was it identical? File may have to do more work on one machine.

    Gandhi> Moreover, it's startup time which is the problem, not run-time.

  How can you be sure? File does very little, true, but it does do some.

    Gandhi> If I passed many files on the command line, file waited for about
    Gandhi> five or six seconds and then processed the files as if there were
    Gandhi> no other difficulties.

    Gandhi> Most of the execution time differences are nowhere near this
    Gandhi> severe, but in general the ELF times are higher than the a.out
    Gandhi> times.

  I'm disputing this, it even seems reasonable as ELF is more complicated.

    Gandhi> Someone mentioned alignment issues.  Anyone else have a clue?

    Gandhi> On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Michael Richardson wrote:

    Gandhi> # # Try it on identical files....  #

    Gandhi> Which I did.

  Then why did "file" return different answers?

]      Out and about in Ottawa.    hmmm... beer.                |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another NetBSD/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy");  [