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Re: Do we really need correct st_nlink count for directories?
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 07:32:01AM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
> According to Christopher Faylor on 4/24/2008 7:11 AM:
>>> subdir counting on local drives as well? It doesn't seem to fullfil
>>> any real need anymore, it's just a performance killer.
>> I thought find used it.
>
> find, and some of the coreutils, use it if it is > 1, but only as an
> optimization (correct applications should never rely on it being > 1, and
> thus have a non-optimal fallback for when it is 1). The idea of using
> st_nlink is to speed up scanning the entire directory (when all you care
> about is subdirectories, you can stop after the correct number have been
> seen, rather than continuing on to read the entire directory). But if it
> takes an entire directory read to determine a correct st_nlink, in order to
> avoid an entire directory as an optimization, then it isn't optimal. I'm
> all for dropping correct st_nlink, and using 1 instead.
Ok, in that case, I vote for nuking it.
cgf