From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:08:46 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] grep: do not do external grep on skip-worktree entries
Message-ID: <7vhbr2pcsh.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20100104064408.GA7785@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> I have to wonder, though...did anybody ever actually profile our
> internal grep to find out _why_ it was so much slower than GNU grep?

I vaguely recall that somebody fairly competent mentioned that modern grep
implementations are based on DFA engines, but I offhand don't remember if
the discussion had concrete numbers.

> Could we simply ship a better grep engine and obsolete external grep?

Yes, that is a very constructive longer term solution.