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Re: [PATCH 8/8] fts: do not exhaust memory when processing million-entry


From: Jim Meyering
Subject: Re: [PATCH 8/8] fts: do not exhaust memory when processing million-entry directories
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:36:29 +0200

Paul Eggert wrote:
> Thanks for all that work to make fts better!  A couple of minor things
> about comments:
>
> On 08/18/2011 06:53 AM, Jim Meyering wrote:
>
>> +           into memory at once.  However, When an fts_compar function
>
> The "However," can be removed (there are too many Buts etc. in the
> neighborhood already ...).
>
>> +           The other conditionals ensure
>> +           that we are using the *at functions (FTS_CWDFD) and that we
>> +           are not in no-chdir mode (induced by use of FTS_LOGICAL).  */
>
> Are these other conditionals independent of whether we want to avoid
> putting too many entries in RAM?  If so, perhaps we should remove these
> other conditionals; if not, it'd help for the comment to explain why not.

Initially I didn't even write that "The other conditionals..." sentence.
I agree that it doesn't say enough.  The main motivation was to solve
the problems that were most common, and to avoid getting bogged down in
the less-common use cases.  Already, this change is defending against
something very unusual: applying common tools to directories with
millions of entries.  Worrying about applying "du -L" (FTS_LOGICAL)
on such a directory is far lower priority.

I'll add a FIXME saying that we should try to remove those conditionals,
but that doing so will require careful testing of those less-common
use cases.  Actually, as I write this, I confess I'm thinking that the
marginal gain is not worth the risk.



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