From: Ryan McGovern <mcgoverp@...>
Date: 2006-07-10T23:13:00+09:00
Subject: Re: fastest way of looping through directories

To do a deep listing i do a recursive algorithm with Dir.foreach.  Here 
is some code that counts up the sizes you could change the return values 
so that it returns a list of files and directories.  this also stops if 
the depth is >24 this helps to stop if it catches a hardlink that makes 
it loop on it's self.

def deepsize(path,depth)
      if(depth>24)
        return 0
      end
      if(!File.exists?(path))
        return 0
      end
      d=Dir.new(path)
      cont=true
      size=0
      while(cont)
        sub=d.read
        if(sub==nil)
          break
        end

        if(sub=="."||sub=="..")

          next
        end
        st=File.lstat(path+"/"+sub)
        if(st.file?)
          size+=st.size

        else
        
          if(!st.symlink?&&st.directory?)
            size+=deepsize(path+"/"+sub,depth+1)

          end
        end
      end
      return size
    end

Thomas Coopman wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for the fastest way for looping through directories.
>
> at the moment i'm using Find but when I test this, the first time it runs
> really slow (like 20 seconds) the second time it runs much much quicker
> (less than a second).
> The problem is that I don't need to run this twice but only once.  Is 
> this
> because I use the unit tests that it runs slow or is it something else.
>
> I only need the path of all the files in the directory + subdirectories.
> What would be the fastest for this?
> using Dir.foreach or Find or something else
>
> Thanks for the help
>