speed of 'ls -l'

[utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards]

>From decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley Tue Sep 22 15:33:24 1981
It occurs to me that your first suggestion -- remembering where your
search left off -- will lose badly on frequently accessed files in a
directory, as it will always have to search the whole thing.  It also
means that one can't optimize, say, /bin, by moving stuff in in a set
order.

Your second suggestion -- sorting directory entries by i-number -- isn't
too hard to implement if you do it a block at a time.