Re: Security question: "Text file busy" overwriting executables but

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sat, 13 Oct 2001, Jamie Lokier wrote:
>
> There are applications (GCC comes to mind) which are using mmap() to
> read files now because it is measurably faster than read(), for
> sufficiently large source files.
>
> I don't know where the optimal costs lie.

The gcc people tested it, and their cut-off point is at 30kB or so.
Anything smaller than that is faster to just "read()".

Now, that's a traditional mmap(), though, which has more overhead than a
"read-with-PAGE_COPY" would have. The pure mmap() approach has the actual
page fault overhead too, along with having to do "fstat()" and "munmap()".

		Linus