Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 20:32:42 +0300
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Sender: halo1 AT zahav DOT net DOT il
To: "Laurynas Biveinis" <lauras AT softhome DOT net>
Message-Id: <2110-Wed23May2001203241+0300-eliz@is.elta.co.il>
X-Mailer: Emacs 20.6 (via feedmail 8.3.emacs20_6 I) and Blat ver 1.8.9
CC: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <20010523181900.A1817@lauras.lt>
Subject: Re: Add d_type member to struct dirent
References: <1659-Tue22May2001182402+0300-eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il> <20010522222711 DOT A2213 AT lauras DOT lt> <3405-Wed23May2001062932+0300-eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il> <20010523181900 DOT A1817 AT lauras DOT lt>
Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com
X-Mailing-List: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com
Precedence: bulk

> From: "Laurynas Biveinis" <lauras AT softhome DOT net>
> Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 18:19:00 +0200
> 
> > > This scenario in comment isn't the fastest one - the fastest
> > > way to check out for symlinkiness is __internal_readlink(),
> > > not *stat(). So if application really stat unknown files, I suggest
> > > doing __internal_readlink() here.
> > 
> > I was thinking about GNU Fileutils, and they only use standard
> > functions.  
> 
> No, I meant that _library_ should do __internal_readlink, not fileutils.

You mean, you think readdir should call __internal_readlink to find
out if this is a symlink, and if so, to set d_type to DT_LNK?

If so, then this is exactly what I wanted to avoid: opening a file and
reading its first chunk will slow down readdir tremendously.  It is
IMHO unreasonable to punish all programs which use readdir to such a
great extent.

The decision I made to set suspect symlinks to DT_UNKNOWN was based on
an assumption that on a typical DJGPP system, the number of symlinks
will be relatively small, so the version of `ls' that uses this
feature will still be significantly faster than without it.