Re: ls /dev

[Tomasz Wegrzanowski <maniek@beer.com>]

On Sat, Jul 29, 2000 at 08:53:51AM +0300, Kalle Olavi Niemitalo wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski <maniek@beer.com> writes:
> 
> > Users usually don't want UI app to provide them with informations,
> > that, although quite useful, would make them have to wait awfully
> > lot of time.
> 
> Instead of stat_trivial(), would an asynchronous stat() do the
> job?  An interactive application could stat all files in a
> directory, and deliver the data to the screen as it comes in.
> And the user wouldn't have to wait at all.  For noninteractive
> things like ls, there could be a timeout.
> 
> This is already doable with io_stat_request, I think.

I have hard time imagining how program can request inforamtion
in non-blocking way without very much magic.
Even harder to imagining how non-interactive program can do it.

Anyway, this magic would be even more useful to save bandwidth
(if you entered /ftp/sunsite/pub/, UI wouldn't try to get file counts
in all dirs) and CPU (mc ; cd /fortunefs/ ; cat ./short :: mc shouldn't
try stating them all just to see one-time sizes).

> > Remember that every node is translated. It might be per-file translator
> > or per-dirtree translator, but every node is translated anyway.
> 
> If there's no underlying node, I wouldn't call that translation.

Translator might be already called, only provide samo files statically,
while others dynamicaly.

+++

I don't see any other way, only per-file flag. Aditional byte in
struct dirent { char d_flag; } could be good to do it.