> Btw will using something like an mmap extension for ruby speed things
> up for me ?.
>

Can't harm to try. I use it for uploading large files and it helps
there.

Unfortunately Operating systems don't always behave like you think they
ought to when doing something like this. Get to know your profiler and
brush up on your data processing techniques. When you hit a speed
problem, you *have* to start and understand what the machine is doing
with each high level instruction you give it and how they all interact
with each other.

NeilW