> read() will make two calls - one to obtain the size of the variable, the > other to read it. It looks like cat will also trigger an fstat(), so we're > probably also making a call for that. There's presumably some optimisation > that could be made there if we trust the firmware not to change the size > behind our back. Hmmm. "ls -l" reports the size of each of the files without causing any SMIs, so Linux has that cached someplace and "read" is being silly making a call to get something that we already know. Unless we think the size may be changing asynchronously and are OK with reporting a stale value for "stat" but want the actual value for "read". -Tony ��.n��������+%������w��{.n�����{����*jg��������ݢj����G�������j:+v���w�m������w�������h�����٥