[hacknews] ls

david@utzoo.UUCP (David Trueman) (03/09/84)

I have changed ls(1) to use getopt(3).  The only visible effect of this is
that multiple options may now be listed separately, as well as in a single 
group as was the case previously.  It also now prints the "file: not found"
message on the standard error stream rather than on the standard output.
-- 
				David Trueman @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!david

henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (05/29/85)

By playing some tricks with memory allocation inside ls(1), it has been
speeded up significantly.  The difference is too small to measure for
small directories, but is quite noticeable for big ones.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry

david@utzoo.UUCP (David Trueman) (06/07/85)

Ls(1) now caches login (or group) names to speed up `ls -l' in directories
with files owned by several users (like /tmp).  When run on a moderately
busy system, it typically runs at twice the speed for /tmp.

At the same time, the code was changed to use several library routines
including the directory scanning routines, mtorwx(3) and warning(3) and
error(3).  The use of the last two results in slightly different, but
more informative diagnostics.  The use of the directory scanning routines
was not suitable for the `-f' option, so ls now punts to bls(1) for
this function.

Stay tuned for an even better caching scheme.
-- 
				David Trueman @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!david