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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!seismo!hao!ames-lm!jaw
From: jaw@ames-lm.UUCP (James A. Woods)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: fast file finder update
Message-ID: <178@ames-lm.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Mar-84 00:35:03 EST
Article-I.D.: ames-lm.178
Posted: Thu Mar 22 00:35:03 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Mar-84 07:14:44 EST
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 20

#	"find, and ye shall seek" -- The Bell Labs Way

     For those who grabbed my fast find code off the net a few months
back, I am posting an improved regular expression pre-match routine to
net.sources.  Now constructions like

	find 'src*thing.c'

will work much faster.  The method and philosophy behind the modified 'find'
can be ascertained from the Usenix ;login: of February, 1983, p. 8.  Basically,
the code searches a compressed database for files given a piece of the pathname.
Representative timing for our 11/750 with a Fujitsu Eagle and an RA80: 
less than 10 user seconds for 47000 files.  This is certainly better than
groping around with 'cd' and 'ls' or using the multi-minute standard find.

     Late 4.1c tapes (early 4.2 also?) had the executable and database
installed, but no source.  The algorithm will eventually be turbocharged
for larger filesystems.

	-- James A. Woods  {dual,hplabs,hao,research}!ames-lm!jaw