Long filenames

[Felix Lee]

In article <4439 at ficc.uu.net>,
   peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>	You need lots of long file names.
>	'ls -C' is useless.
>	'ls' takes forever.

'ls -C' is only useless on pathologically small terminals (such as
24x80 :-).  The columnizer could also be improved to let exceptionally
long names violate column boundaries.

'ls' takes forever only if you use the '-l', '-F', or similar options
that have to stat() each file.  'ls' without those options is
marginally slower than 'sort'.

Curiously, 'csh' filecompletion listing is quite fast, much faster
than 'ls -F'.  This is mostly illusion.  'ls' stats each file as it
reads the directory and then prints the list out.  'csh' reads the
directory and then stats each file as it's printed out.  The effect is
that 'csh' seems faster because of the better average response time.
'ls' could do something similar with specialcase code (albeit the most
common case).  Might be worth it.
--
Felix Lee	flee at shire.cs.psu.edu	*!psuvax1!shire!flee