Apologies for following up my own post.

On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 06:20:59PM -0500, Eric Siegerman wrote:
> [...] in neither case does [dd] need to copy the data
> from one buffer to another.  It can just have a single buffer
> that's max(ibs,obs) long [...]

Oops; I'm wrong about this.  It's only true if ibs is an exact
multiple of obs, or vice versa.  Otherwise, the data *will* need
to be copied.  I have no idea whether any dd implementations do
in fact optimize the exact-multiple case.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics AT telepres DOT com
|  |  /
The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; that's why so
many cults and myths of the serpent exist, because it's hard to
represent the return of the sun by the coiling of a hippopotamus.
        - Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"