1. your benchmarks exercise a very narrow set of use cases
2. the overhead of modifying the dirent is statistically zero compared to the costs related to manipulating the files on disk
2. the overhead of modifying the dirent is statistically zero compared to the costs related to manipulating the files on disk
$ hyperfine --warmup 3 -N "./test /dev/shm 8 zip" "./test /dev/shm 8 chain" Benchmark 1: ./test /dev/shm 8 zip Time (mean ± σ): 118.5 ms ± 11.6 ms [User: 92.9 ms, System: 726.6 ms] Range (min … max): 103.6 ms … 143.4 ms 23 runs
Benchmark 2: ./test /dev/shm 8 chain Time (mean ± σ): 235.7 ms ± 11.0 ms [User: 116.4 ms, System: 1537.7 ms] Range (min … max): 220.1 ms … 258.3 ms 13 runs
Summary './test /dev/shm 8 zip' ran 1.99 ± 0.22 times faster than './test /dev/shm 8 chain'
i mean ignore me if you want, no skin off my back
but you're not benchmarking what you think you're benchmarking