optimizations for 3x speedup in ld

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Rob,

> I'm attaching the patch so people can see it/test it/comment on it,
> keeping in mind this is copyright Novell for now.

I have had a look over the patch - it certainly does improve the link 
times.  There were a few small issues with regard to formatting and 
comment layout, but nothing serious.  So provided that Novell want to 
contribute the code we will be very happy to accept it.

Please could you check with Novell management to make sure that it is OK 
for you to contribute the patch and if so, please let us know.

Cheers
   Nick

PS.  I had a thought that might improve the speed of the 
walk_wildcard_consider_section() function.  What if you removed the 
duplicate test of wildcardp (list_tmp->name) ?  eg:

static void
walk_wild_consider_section (lang_wild_statement_type *ptr,
                             lang_input_statement_type *file,
                             asection *s,
                             struct wildcard_list *sec,
                             callback_t callback,
                             void *data)
{
   struct name_list *list_tmp;

   /* Don't process sections from files which were excluded.  */
   for (list_tmp = sec->spec.exclude_name_list;
        list_tmp;
        list_tmp = list_tmp->next)
     {
       bfd_boolean skip;
       typedef int (*cmp_fn) (const char *, const char *, int);
       cmp_fn cmp;

       cmp = wildcardp (list_tmp->name) ? fnmatch : (cmp_fn) strcmp;

       skip = cmp (list_tmp->name, file->filename, 0) == 0;

       /* If this file is part of an archive, and the
	 archive is excluded, exclude this file.  */
       if (! skip
	  && file->the_bfd != NULL
           && file->the_bfd->my_archive != NULL
           && file->the_bfd->my_archive->filename != NULL)
	skip = cmp (list_tmp->name,
		    file->the_bfd->my_archive->filename, 0) == 0;

       if (skip)
         return;
     }

   callback (ptr, sec, s, file, data);
}