Good DOS binary file viewer?

[Jim Leonard]

Dave McGuire wrote:
>> It's nice to see LIST getting the votes, but it's very slow on 808x  
>> hardware, which was Dave's target platform.
> 
> 
>   Buh??  I don't think I've ever seen a lighter-weight piece of  
> software than LIST...I used it daily when my 8MHz V20-based PC clone  
> was considered a screamer, and it was never any slower than "instant".

An 8MHz 8086 is more than twice as fast as Dave's target hardware (a 
4.77MHz 8088).  On such a machine, it would be tolerable.

Look, it's a nice viewer, but view a file out of a ramdisk on a 4.77MHz 
8088 if you don't believe me.  There's a 5-second minimum startup delay 
to fill a buffer, then another delay when you cross memory windows.  If 
you're trying to inspect more than a handful of files at the same time, 
it gets frustrating.

Don't confuse small size and age with "lightweight".  A Boyer-Moore 
search algorithm written in Pascal will outperform a REP CMPSB in 
assembler.  LIST is flexible but it's not the fastest.
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)
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