Re: Performance issues

[Paul Eggert]

"Blackstone, J. David" <address@hidden> writes:

> a simple ls -1 is very slow in a directory with a large number of files:

GNU 'ls' had some performance improvements in this area recently, so
perhaps all you need is an upgrade.

Which version of GNU ls are you talking about?  (Type "ls --version".)
Which version of Solaris?  ("uname -a" should tell you.)
What kind of Solaris filesystem?  ("df -k .; mount" should tell you.)
Which locale?  (The "locale" command should tell you.)

I can't reproduce the problem with coreutils 5.2.1 on Solaris 8 sparc
in a directory with 39697 files; the directory is NFS-mounted from a
Network Appliance box of unknown vintage.

1039-national $ time /bin/ls -1 >/dev/null

real    0m0.763s
user    0m0.460s
sys     0m0.260s
1040-national $ time /bin/ls -1 >/dev/null

real    0m0.920s
user    0m0.490s
sys     0m0.250s
1041-national $ time $j/ls -1 >/dev/null

real    0m1.231s
user    0m0.730s
sys     0m0.120s
1042-national $ time $j/ls -1 >/dev/null

real    0m0.872s
user    0m0.770s
sys     0m0.100s
1043-national $ $j/ls --version
ls (coreutils) 5.2.1
Written by Richard Stallman and David MacKenzie.

Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
1044-national $ uname -a
SunOS national 5.8 Generic_117000-03 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60
1045-national $ /bin/ls | wc
   39697   39697  266768
1046-national $ locale
LANG=
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_ALL=C