Re: ls -l|head seems to look at all files in directory

[Reuben Thomas]

On Mon, 25 May 2009, Jim Meyering wrote:

> Reuben Thomas wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 25 May 2009, Jim Meyering wrote:
> >
> > > To do what he wants you have to know that ls -1U is the only
> > > way to get one output entry per readdir call.
> > >
> > > Reuben, you want to do it like this:
> > >
> > >  ls -1U|head|xargs ls -l
> >
> > Thanks for the hint about -1, but this doesn't seem to make any
> > difference: I run "ls -1U|head" in a directory with lots of files
> > (about 10,000) and it pauses for a minute or so before giving me my
> > ten lines of output.
> >
> > If I run the command again, then of course it runs almost instantly,
> > so I'm not sure what use the loops are in the tests you give.
>
> That amount of delay suggests you're using an old ext2 or ext3 file system.
> What FS type, distro, kernel, and mount options?

Linux 2.6.26, Debian lenny, reiserfs with mount options defaults,user_xattr.

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