Re: [Gnu-arch-users] abrowse and rbrowse

[James Blackwell]

The main differences between abrowse and rbrowse is that abrowse offers
limiting via a LIMIT interface, and rbrowse limits by using a regular
expression interface. 

rbrowse is a refactoring of abrowse. Well, kinda. When I dived into
abrowse, the code was deeply nested and I had a good deal of difficulty
figuring out what abrowse was doing internally.


In lists.arch.users, you wrote:
> On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 03:18:01PM -0500, Charles Duffy wrote:
>> "rbrowse" is new code, written with the intent of replacing "abrowse".
>> However, since abrowse still has some advantages to it (more options and
>> such), they're coexisting for the time being.
>
> abrowse can be much faster if you're listing a slow remote archive, and
> specify a particular category/branch.  The reason is that abrowse only
> accesses the category/branch you specify, but rbrowse -- to best of my
> knowledge (based on observation, not reading the code) -- fetches everything
> and then only prints what matches.

Though there was a problem, it was fixed months ago. Both commands
actually run in the same time. These days, if you time both abrowse and
rbrowse from start to finish, you should end up with the same timing.

> rbrowse could be optimized to use abrowse-style behavior when a limit is
> specified, and then should be as fast as abrowse in that case, but it hasn't
> been done yet.

Pardon? Why would you want to replace regexes with limits? The point to
rbrowse is to replace limits with regexes.

> So for now, consider rbrowse and abrowse different tools for different
> situations.  I don't see any reason why their functionality _can't_ be merged
> though, and hopefully this will happen someday; just a small matter of
> programming.... :-)

The only thing (that I'm aware of) that abrowse has that rbrowse limits
is the ability to list local and foreign merges.

> [BTW, I notice that abrowse and rbrowse use different amounts of indentation;
>  perhaps this should be made consistent, in case somebody's tools are keying
>  off indentation level?]

Rbrowse's indentation looks the same to me as the rest of tla.


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