I'm using ExifTool version 12.42 on Windows 10.
In my app, I open ExifTool in `-stay_open` mode. If the version of ExifTool has changed, I regenerate a list of supported groups and tags, both readable and writable.
So I get the groups and then for each group execute
-list -GROUPNAME:all -tab
or
-listw -GROUPNAME:all -tab
There are quite a few group names so if it doesn't run fast, it can take a couple minutes.
My question is with regard to `-list` vs `-listw`. When I run the `-list` version, I can query 5+ tags per second. When I run the `-listw` I can only query about 1 tag every 2 seconds.
Is there a reason for this speed difference between the two versions? Is it expected?
The -listw option does do a bit more work because the write modules also have to be loaded, but here I don't see a significant time difference between the two:
> time exiftool -list > t1
0.793u 0.033s 0:00.83 98.7% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w
> time exiftool -listw > t1
0.768u 0.045s 0:00.81 98.7% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w
> time exiftool -list > t1
0.791u 0.033s 0:00.83 98.7% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w
> time exiftool -listw > t1
0.794u 0.047s 0:00.84 98.8% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w
The system time is consistently more than 0.01 sec longer, but the user time and total clock time aren't significantly different.
- Phil