I have an 'incoming' directory that may or may not contain files that have to be 'processed'.
There are off an on a ton of files, sometimes indeed in the tens of thousands.

The procedure that each file undergoes may be expensive- thus I have a daemon sort of thing.. that will run x times during the day and maybe a lot during the night.. or maybe if it detects that the cpu has been "idle" for x minutes.

So I take a few files, maybe ten, and do something with them, sleep or check for cpu usage.. then iterate.
My frustration is that sometimes it takes a third of the time per iteration to pick some files.

I am aware that I can cache the directory read data, etc etc .. I am not seeking a way to change what I am doing, I am seeking to .. pick some files out of many- quickly. I figure it's something that would be worth setting precedent to - for the future.

Maybe you are suggesting I could pipe in the file data directly from pointers to the dir struct or something funny like that? (ext3)

In reply to Re^2: quick way to read a few directory entries of many by leocharre
in thread quick way to read a few directory entries of many by leocharre

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