[axel-devel] [axel-Bugs][311326] Display more digits when using alternate display

[axel-bugs at alioth.debian.org]

Bugs item #311326, was opened at 2008-12-29 11:25
>Status: Closed
>Priority: 1
Submitted By: Kevin Chang (silverfire-guest)
>Assigned to: Philipp Hagemeister (phihag-guest)
Summary: Display more digits when using alternate display 


Initial Comment:
Show more digits after the decimal place -- 2.347MB/s is more descriptive than just 2.3MB/s

Here's the patch for trunk.

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>Comment By: Philipp Hagemeister (phihag-guest)
Date: 2008-12-29 11:45

Message:
Hello Kevin, thanks for your patch.
However, I'm not sure why you would want to see the exact speed. Of course, we could always print the speed to the precision of 1B/s, but imho that wouldn't matter to anyone.

Please keep also in mind that the speed shown by axel is necessarily a rough approximation. First of all, our speed measurement method is simple and not as sophisticated as that of some other apps. But even if we would dedicate Megabytes of well-written code to this problem, we could not make up for the Operating System and performance considerations impacting any speed measurement to the point where it will always be skewed.

So, if we would incorporate the patch, we would feign a precision that we can not guarantee and - so do I assume - that most people do neither need nor want. I closed the bug for now, but if I overlooked something I'll reopen it anytime.

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