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.