On Thu, May 01, 2008, "Martin v. L?wis" wrote: > Guido van Rossum wrote: >> >> There is one use case I can see for an iterator-version of >> os.listdir() (to be named os.opendir()): when globbing a huge >> directory looking for a certain pattern. Using os.listdir() you end up >> needed enough memory to hold all of the names at once. Using >> os.opendir() you would need only enough memory to hold all of the >> names THAT MATCH. > > You would still have to read the entire directory, right? In that > kind of class, there is a number of applications; e.g. du(1) also > wouldn't have to create a list of all files in the directory, but add > the sizes of the files incrementally.
Actually, the primary application I'm thinking of is a CGI that displays part of a directory listing (paged) for manual processing of individual files. > So the question really is whether it is a problem to keep all file > names in memory simultaneously. As Aahz says, the total memory > consumption for a large directory is still comparatively low, for > today's machines. Only for a single process. Throw together three or ten processes, and it adds up. As I said, not a huge problem, but defintely the potential for pain. -- Aahz ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ Help a hearing-impaired person: http://rule6.info/hearing.html _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
