I think you're misreading it - it includes examples of creating queues, but I don't see it implying that you need multiple queues.

I have an example of a 'queue based' worker thread model: A basic 'worker' threading model

Personally I'd be thinking in terms of using 'File::Find' to traverse your filesystem linearly, but have if feed a queue with files that need more detailed inspection. The two most expensive operations in this process are: Filesystem traversal (which is hard to optimise without messing with disks and filesystem layout). Also - reading the files for calculating their hashes - the reading of files may well be more 'expensive' than doing the sums. My thought would be to ask if you can do partial hashes, iteratively - if you work through a file say 'one block' at a time (varies depending on filesystem) you have a single read IO operation, that you then hash - and can work through a file if it's longer, until hashes don't match. If the file is a genuine dupe, then you'll still have to read the whole lot, but if it's not it'll discard faster.

Thanks for the example! I'll check it out.

I'm sorry I provided the wrong link. The code I wrote comes from this code taken directly from the examples directory of the threads CPAN distro by JDHEDDEN. It's called pool_reuse.pl

The block by block comparison of files which you proposed is actually part of my next approach. I may be able to forgo the need to digest the file content altogether and get a real speed boost by only reading as many bytes from a file as I need to in order to tell that it's different. Much less IO required.

Tommy
A mistake can be valuable or costly, depending on how faithfully you pursue correction

Second reply: By way of follow up I wanted to thank you Preceptor for the informative link. Also I didn't respond to your comment about File::Find. I didn't use it because it is slower than File::Util directory traversal in my own tests.

I have forked the reference code for the hackathon and implemented the kind of threading consistent with your code example. More to come...I'm benching it right now.

Tommy
A mistake can be valuable or costly, depending on how faithfully you pursue correction