X-Recipient: archive-cygwin AT delorie DOT com
X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org
Message-ID: <47294BE7.E195E110@dessent.net>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:45:43 -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: copying a million tiny files?
References: <6a42eec70710311438s273b63dcxc6c741dde4593afc AT mail DOT gmail 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

sam reckoner wrote:

> I'm not exaggerating. I have over one million small files that like to
> move between disks. The problem is that even getting a directory
> listing takes forever.
> 
> Is there a best practice for this?

I know it's heresy but if you just want to copy files why not use the
native XCOPY?  It will not suffer the performance degredation of having
to emulate the POSIX stat semantics on every file, just like the native
DIR command in a large directory does not take ages because it simply
uses FindFirstFile/FindNextFile which are fairly efficient (but do not
provide sufficient information to emulate POSIX.)

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/