Ian Jackson writes ("Re: Multiple 'dpkg --compare-versions' in one process"): > If it's really only thousands then just spawning dpkg each time should > be fine. I just did a test of 2896 invocations of dpkg > --compare-versions and it took 7.6s of real time on my 2GHz Athlon. Oh, and if use dash instead of bash it's 6.5s instead. Ian.