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From: "one2001boy AT yahoo DOT com" <one2001boy AT yahoo DOT com>
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Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: latest ls.exe version in XP problem
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Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 07:27:04 GMT
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>From: "one2001boy AT yahoo DOT com" <one2001boy AT yahoo DOT com>
>>Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 02:33:33 GMT
>>
>>under Windows XP in directory C:\windows\system32, I
>>have 2558 File(s).
>>
>>run ls -F, I wait for 16 seconds, and then screen start to display
>>the files and directories.
> 
> 
> Can you tell how much time it takes on the same machine, and in the
> same directory, to run "ls" (without the -F option)?

It took 4 seconds to display all. The file starts to display right after 
you type dir.

> 
> The reason I'm asking this is because on XP, whenever any DOS program
> is run, Windows needs to start a DOS emulation, load and process the
> AUTOEXEC.NT file, and do other time-consuming chores.  That makes any
> DJGPP program look generally sluggish on XP.
> 
> 
>>The computer I am running is Pentium 4, 3.0 Ghz, with 512 Meg.
> 
> 
> I tried this on a laptop with 993-MHz Pentium III and 256 MB of main
> memory, running XP SP1a, and got the following responses: "ls -F"
> starts displaying after 10 seconds when I run it on WINDOWS\SYSTEM32
> directory first time, and after only 3 seconds when I run it on the
> same directory afterwards (because the directory contents is already
> in the Windows disk cache).  

Right.


 > Just "ls" starts displaying after 1
> second.  This system has 1844 files (including 41 subdirectories) in
> its WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory.
> 
> The same "ls -F" command on a 450-MHz box running Windows 98 (1151
> files in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory) takes 7 seconds.
> 
> So it sounds like the CPU speed is not important here.  What matters
> is the file-system efficiency.
> 
> Also, the fact that "ls -F" takes a while in such a huge directory is
> not really news to me.  We are lucky such directories are rare.

I guess not all people will always use ls -F.

> 
> Bottom line, I suggest to use "ls --color" to find out file
> attributes.  It is faster because it only looks at the files'
> file-name extensions, but does not read the first few bytes to look
> for the magic signature if the extension does not reveal the file's
> type.  That will miss a few rare executable files if the LS_COLORS
> variable doesn't catch them.
> 

This is a nice try. Thank you.