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

[Reuben Thomas]

On Mon, 25 May 2009, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:

> * Reuben Thomas (address@hidden) 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.
>
> Are all the files just normal files - or are any symlinks to other
> directories or mount points?

Just normal files. It's a maildir directory.

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