gistfile.txt

# all times are in ms
# downloads.tar is my downloads folder, which is gigantic because i'm lazy
# and never delete anything out of it.
$ ls -laF downloads.tar
-rw-r--r--  1 isaacs  staff  6552657408 Mar 23 23:54 downloads.tar

# read synchronously and writes to an extractor that does all sync fs operations
$ node es-sync2.js downloads.tar
13734.368
# 13.7s, not bad

# the default async streaming extractor
$ node es.js downloads.tar
14273.495
# 14.3s.  also good.

# tar-fs, the fastest tar parser on npm right now
$ node tf.js downloads.tar
29743.513
# ~30s.  Hmm.. Acceptable.

# node-tar v1, what a stank trash pile who wrote this thing jeez
$ node old-extract.js downloads.tar
98606.987
stream.js:74
      throw er; // Unhandled stream error in pipe.
      ^

Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Users/isaacs/dev/js/tar/test/extract/into/some/folder/Downloads/Spectacle.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Headers'

# UNACCEPTABLE!

# Just for comparison, this is the gold standard right here for tar handling, the
# incredibly fast and always correct bsdtar, let's see how it handles it...

$ time tar xf downloads.tar -C test/extract/into/some/folder/

real	0m16.920s
user	0m0.635s
sys	0m12.126s

# 17 seconds!?  To be fair, that includes process startup, which the timers in
# my node programs excluded, so really, the 12.126s plus the 0.635s is the apples
# to apples comparison.
# That is, 12.75s
# So, the sync extractor is only 7.5% slower than tar(1), and the async streaming
# extractor is only 11.5% slower.  (Compared with tar-fs at more than double, and
# node-tar 1.x at.. well, infinity slower, because it barfs.)