Aucbvax.3267 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards Tue Sep 22 20:53:12 1981 ls performance >From ihnss!karn@Berkeley Tue Sep 22 15:34:20 1981 One thing I've found about ls -l is that it REALLY slows to a crawl when the files belong to a number of different userids. This is because a linear search of /etc/passwd (and/or /etc/group) is done for each file to map the internal userid back to an ascii owner name. The last userid searched for is kept in case the next file is owned by the same user, so the search is done only once if all the files are owned by the same user. But try it on a large public directory containing commands belonging to a number of users, and you'll see what I mean. Phil ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.