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Date:	Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:40:38 -0700
From:	Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
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To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject:	Re: Slow directory listing
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Anton Ivanov wrote:

> I experience a problem whereby 'ls' of a directory takes upwards of 20
> seconds.  I've searched around the archives and found reports of issues
> that could be similar (i.e. slow bash completion) but it didn't seem
> like any action was taken.

Cygwin is slow.  This is by design.  20 seconds even sounds pretty fast
for a large directory.

It's not clear whether you mean you were doing "ls -l" or just "ls", but
in either case expect to wait.  In order to provide a POSIX environment
Cygwin has to synthesize a number things that the system does not
provide, or does not provide in a convenient or efficient interface. 
Examples: symlinks, the executable mode bit, and .exe-magic.  Just
running 'ls' means that every file in the directory has to be indivually
queried and opened (and in some cases read from) in order to provide all
the fields in the POSIX stat struct, compared to running the native
"dir" command which can simply read out the entries from the directory
and nothing else.

Brian

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