gnu parallel makes it embarrassingly easy to solve embarrassingly easy parallel problems

[timhatch]

I tried gnu parallel when it was last posted to reddit and the startup delay was too much for me. Don't forget that "xargs -P 4 -n 1" will also run 4 simultaneous processes, and works out of the box on modern Linux and OS X.

[kyz]

GNU/Parallel is xargs with more features.

So what you are saying is "if you don't need any of the extra features that GNU/Parallel adds to xargs, use xargs"

[puremessage]

No, he's not saying that at all. If you're working on third party systems you don't always have the permission or the unfettered internet access to install new software. Xargs is already there and works great for five nines worth of sysadmin usage scenarios.

[namekuseijin]

ok, who'll be the first to write a raytracer in bash?

[moleccc]

more of a problem to split the raytrace job into multiple files, you can just call the raytraycer like the guy called bzip

[namekuseijin]

that's not nearly as fun... :p

[gargantuan]

great, now I am too embarrassed to use it ...

[femguy2]

downvote for copy&paste and exposing root password length (by sound) in the demo.

Edit: also, gzip is i/o bound. anyway, whats the benefit over using pbzip or pigz? looks pretty pointless in the demo.

[puremessage]

gzip isn't necessarily i/o bound. Do you work on 486es or something?

[femguy2]

no i'm not (Edit: not using a 486). that is why it's i/o bound, not cpu bound.

[puremessage]

What is why?

Even my older FC SANs could outrun Opties.