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Re: Do we really need correct st_nlink count for directories?
According to Eric Blake on 4/24/2008 7:32 AM:
But if it takes an entire directory read to determine a
correct st_nlink, in order to avoid an entire directory as an
optimization, then it isn't optimal. I'm all for dropping correct
st_nlink, and using 1 instead.
More importantly, if it will speed up the stat() of a directory in the
case where the st_nlink optimization is not being used (which I believe is
more often the case), then the performance improvement of not counting
subdirs for a faster stat() definitely outweighs the loss in optimization
on the few places where the readdir() st_nlink optimization even makes
sense (for example, even though find is coded to use the st_nlink
optimization, I would hazard a guess that less than 50% of find queries
are actually able to use it, because there are only a limited subset of
queries where you only care about identifying subdirectories, rather than
visiting all files in the directory).
--
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!
Eric Blake ebb9@byu.net