Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] New packet list: Optimize memory usage

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jul 12, 2009, at 12:48 PM, Jakub Zawadzki wrote:

> This patch (Proof of Concept) removes allocating memory for columns  
> data,
> and makes them 'dynamic' (packets redissected when column data needed)

That should make changing the time format, for example, *extremely*  
fast - it should just have to redisplay all the rows that are  
currently on the screen, it won't have to recompute all the column  
strings.  (I.e., it should happen in constant time, not in linear time.)

> I haven't seen any visible lags while scrolling,


Try scrolling backwards through a large gzipped file.

(That doesn't say this is the wrong thing to do - I've been advocating  
this for a while, and made a version of the GTK 1.2[.x] GtkCList with  
"dynamic" column data and prototyped the same thing - it says we need  
to make random access to gzipped files faster.)