X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org
Message-ID: <468ADE76.9E261DCA@dessent.net>
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:40:38 -0700
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Slow directory listing
References: <F9DBA559074DDB41BDD51E9681001BC88C262A AT Deliverance DOT voxify DOT com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-IsSubscribed: yes
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.com>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

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

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/