What is the fastest way to run a script?

Question

I was wondering what is the fastest way to run a script , I've been reading that there is a difference in speed between showing the output of the script on the terminal, redirecting it to a file or perhaps /dev/null.

So if the output is not important , what is the fastest way to get the script to work faster , even if it's minim .

bash ./myscript.sh 
-or-
bash ./myscript.sh > myfile.log
-or-
bash ./myscript.sh > /dev/null

Answer 1

Terminals these days are slower than they used to be, mainly because graphics cards no longer care about 2D acceleration. So indeed, printing to a terminal can slow down a script, particularly when scrolling is involved.

Consequently ./script.sh is slower than ./script.sh >script.log, which in turn is slower than /script.sh >/dev/null, because the latter involve less work. However whether this makes enough of a difference for any practical purpose depends on how much output your script produces and how fast. If your script writes 3 lines and exits, or if it prints 3 pages every few hours, you probably don't need to bother with redirections.

Edit: Some quick (and completely broken) benchmarks:

• In a Linux console, 240x75:

  $ time (for i in {1..100000}; do echo $i 01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789; done)
  real    3m52.053s
  user    0m0.617s
  sys     3m51.442s
  

• In an xterm, 260x78:

  $ time (for i in {1..100000}; do echo $i 01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789; done)
  real    0m1.367s
  user    0m0.507s
  sys     0m0.104s
  

• Redirect to a file, on a Samsung SSD 850 PRO 512GB disk:

   $ time (for i in {1..100000}; do echo $i 01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789; done >file)
   real    0m0.532s
   user    0m0.464s
   sys     0m0.068s
  

• Redirect to /dev/null:

   $ time (for i in {1..100000}; do echo $i 01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789; done >/dev/null)
   real    0m0.448s
   user    0m0.432s
   sys     0m0.016s
  

Answer 2

I would have instinctively agreed with Satō Katsura's answer; it makes sense. However, it's easy enough to test.

I tested writing a million lines to the screen, writing (appending) to a file, and redirecting to /dev/null. I tested each of these in turn, then did five replicates. These are the commands I used.

$ time (for i in {1..1000000}; do echo foo; done)
$ time (for i in {1..1000000}; do echo foo; done > /tmp/file.log) 
$ time (for i in {1..1000000}; do echo foo; done > /dev/null)

I then plotted the total times below.

As you can see, Satō Katsura's presumptions were correct. As per Satō Katsura's answer, I also doubt that the limiting factor will be the output, so it's unlikely that the choice of output will have a substantial effect on the overall speed of the script.

---

FWIW, my original answer had different code, which had the file appending and /dev/null redirect inside the loop.

$ rm /tmp/file.log; touch /tmp/file.log; time (for i in {1..1000000}; do echo foo >> /tmp/file.log; done) 
$ time (for i in {1..1000000}; do echo foo > /dev/null; done)

As John Kugelman pointed out in the comments at the time of writing this, this adds a lot of overhead. As the question stands, this is not really the right way to test it, but I'll leave it here as it clearly shows the cost of re-opening a file repeatedly from within the script itself.

In this case, the results are reversed.

Answer 3

Another way to speed up a script is to use a faster shell interpreter. Compare the speeds of a POSIX busy loop, run under bash v4.4, ksh v93u+20120801, and dash v0.5.8.

1. bash:

   time echo 'n=0;while [ $n -lt 1000000 ] ; do \
                     echo $((n*n*n*n*n*n*n)) ; n=$((n+1)); 
                  done' | bash -s > /dev/null
   

   Output:

   real    0m25.146s
   user    0m24.814s
   sys 0m0.272s
   

2. ksh:

   time echo 'n=0;while [ $n -lt 1000000 ] ; do \
                     echo $((n*n*n*n*n*n*n)) ; n=$((n+1)); 
                  done' | ksh -s > /dev/null
   

   Output:

   real    0m11.767s
   user    0m11.615s
   sys 0m0.010s
   

3. dash:

   time echo 'n=0;while [ $n -lt 1000000 ] ; do \
                     echo $((n*n*n*n*n*n*n)) ; n=$((n+1)); 
                  done' | dash -s > /dev/null
   

   Output:

   real    0m4.886s
   user    0m4.690s
   sys 0m0.184s
   

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A subset of commands inbash and ksh are backwardly compatible to all of the commands in dash. A bash script that only uses commands in that subset should work with dash.

Some bash scripts that use new features can be converted to another interpreter. If the bash script relies heavily on newer features, it may not be worth the bother -- some new bash features are improvements which are both easier to code and more efficient, (despite bash being generally slower), so that the dash equivalent, (which might involve running several other commands), would be slower.

When in doubt, run a test...