On 04/02/17 07:47 AM, Peter Stephenson wrote:
I'm sure this has come up before, but if you're in a position where a saving of this kind is important, there's a good chance you shouldn't really be using a shell at all.
Of course. Still it's good to understand the theory of the thing. As I said, in practice the difference was a milisecond but I backed the wrong horse, which is instructive since it suggests that the shell likes fewer lines more than it likes simplified calculation. Just curious. In practice I'll always go for robustness and better code style.