Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hp-sde!hpcuhb!hpda!hpcupt1!steiny
From: steiny@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Don Steiny)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: ls -l
Message-ID: <6060018@hpcupt1.HP.COM>
Date: 2 Dec 88 20:11:46 GMT
References: <838@nih-csl.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 12

/ hpcupt1:comp.unix.questions / reeder@ut-emx.UUCP (William P. Reeder) /  3:26 pm  Nov 30, 1988 /
In article <838@nih-csl.UUCP>, ted@nih-csl.UUCP (ted persky) writes:
>> it seems that, even for long directory listings, the command takes a very short
>> amount of time to complete, considering all the file opening and closing I guess

>My experience has been that ls can take a very long time to run on
>large directories.  Several posters have already explained that ls
>doesn't have to open each file in the directory; 

	To display the user name, it needs to map the uid to the name
in the /etc/passwd file.   On systems with many users this can take
a long time.