FISG - Fast IRC Stats Generator
===============================

Word of warning
===============
FISG is _not_ a drop-in replacement for PISG. Please don't expect
it to be or expect that it will become one. It won't.


Introduction
============
If you know PISG (Perl IRC Statistics Generator, http://pisg.sf.net/),
then you know what FISG is (mostly) about. It all started with big IRC
logfiles (40 - 100MB) and PISG, which is quite nice in what it does.
But the problem for me was that PISG does it so SLOW and takes lots
of memory, ~100M or more for ~30M logs.

Also, PISG did somewhat more than I really needed, like the useless
"most used word"-stats. What I really wanted, was a FAST and light
analyzer for IRC logs - in 1 day, core of FISG was written and it
proved to be lot faster than PISG.

Next day I improved it even further, 7 times faster than first version.
Now FISG analyzes 40MB logfile in 7 seconds on AMD K6-2 500MHz and
takes just few MB of RAM. Additionally, you only need ANSI-C compiler
and libc for FISG to work, there is even a pre-compiled Win32-version
of FISG available! (see win32/ -subdirectory)


Downside of FISG is the lack of some features and it currently supports
just few logfile formats. In most cases you can specify new formats
yourself, though, so it's not too big problem.


If you want speed and less RAM usage, at cost of some features - choose
FISG. If you need the features, don't mind about bloatness and have Perl
installed, try PISG.


License
=======
FISG is distributed under GNU General Public License version 2,
see COPYING for more information.


If you like FISG, you can thank me by distributing message
about it's existence and voting it on freshmeat.net (search for FISG)

Also, try out XMMS-SID plugin if you are interested in SID-music
(c64 music) and use XMMS player.


Contact
=======
For suggestions, bug-reports, etc.

e-mail: ccr@tnsp.org

New versions will be available from FISG's homepage:

http://www.tnsp.org/fisg.php

---------------------------
Have fun! - ccr/TNSP ' 2003
