On 06/12/2016 07:08, Gregory Ewing wrote:
BartC wrote:
And if there's an error in an option, you may have to abort, which
means throwing away that list of files which, in some cases, can run
into millions.
This "millions of files" thing seems to be an imaginary
monster you've invented to try to scare people. I claim
that, to a very good approximation, it doesn't exist.
I've never encountered a directory containing a million
files, and if such a thing existed, it would be pathological
in enough other ways to make it a really bad idea.
Many of my examples are based on actual experience.
One of my machines /did/ have 3.4 million files in one directory.
(The result of Firefox file caching having run amok for the best part of
a year. Once discovered, it took 15 hours to delete them all.)
In that directory (which was on Windows but accessible via a virtual
Linux), typing any Linux command followed by * would have required all
3.4 million directory entries to be accessed in order to build a 3.4
million-element argv list. I've no idea how long that would have taken.
>DIR *.b *.c
Not with *that particular syntax*. You would need to
design the interface of a program to do that some other
way.
EXACTLY. It's restrictive.
--
Bartc
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