I tend to disagree, I bet the gain wouldn't be even measurable.And I disagree with you on this. The fact you are saving CPU cycles means improved performance. Period. Whether it's measurable or not depends on what you are doing.
Saving CPU cycles is not a good thing per se, it is only good when it saves time. When you sacrifice a measurable time to make an unmeasurable execution gain, you loose time, not gain it.
In this case, any minute you waste on this is worth 19 millions 200 thousands times the gain you expect to make (on standard 16 MHz Falcon).
And you still didn't provide any more example than the two programs which apparently break the POSIX standard by relying on values they should not rely on.
If anyone asks me, there is no evidence MiNT's stat() needs change. This is the two programs which need fixing.
Pozdrawiam KMK