Hello Charles,

I accept your priority, but this slow dirlist issue is very important to me. I really need a way faster method of giving me the name of the files in a folder.

I've come up with a solution - so far, it works for me when listing the root folder containing files only (no symlinks, hardlinks or folders). But I'm not sure whether or not it'll generally work no matter the layout of files and folders.

<code>
char *yaffs_Dir (const char *path) {
  char *rest;
  yaffs_Device *dev = NULL;
  yaffs_Object *obj;
  yaffs_Object *entry = NULL;
  struct list_head *i;
  char name[1000], str[1000], info[1000];
  char *names = (char*)malloc(15*10000);
  int nOk = 0, nNull = 0;
  int len = strlen(path);
  struct yaffs_stat s;

  memset(names, 0, 15*10000);
  obj = yaffsfs_FindRoot(path,&rest);
  if (obj && obj->variantType == YAFFS_OBJECT_TYPE_DIRECTORY) {
    list_for_each(i,&obj->variant.directoryVariant.children) {
      entry = (i) ? list_entry(i, yaffs_Object,siblings) : NULL;
  	if (entry) {
        yaffs_GetObjectName(entry,name,YNAME_MAX+1);
        sprintf(str, "%s/%s", path, name);
        yaffs_lstat(str,&s);
        sprintf(info, "%s length %ld mode %x\n",name,s.st_size,s.st_mode);
        strcat(names, info);
        nOk++;
  	} else {
  	  nNull++;
  	}
    }
  }
  printf("nOk=%d, nNull=%d\n",nOk,nNull);
  return names;
}
</code>

In my system, this function takes approx. 10 secs to complete - that's amazing 60 times faster than if using the 'opendir/readdir' implemented in yaffs.

Comments are very welcome.

Thanks,
Jacob

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Manning" <manningc2@actrix.gen.nz>
To: "Jacob Dall" <jacob.dall@operamail.com>, "Charles Manning" <Charles.Manning@trimble.co.nz>, yaffs@stoneboat.aleph1.co.uk
Subject: Re: [Yaffs] heavy file usage in yaffs
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 15:20:57 +1300

> 
> On Tuesday 18 January 2005 04:00, Jacob Dall wrote:
> > Hello Charles,
> >
> > All file names are on a 8.3 format, and NO, I'm not using
> > SHORT_NAMES_IN_RAM.
> >
> > I've just recompiled my project defining CONFIG_YAFFS_SHORT_NAMES_IN_RAM,
> > but unfortunately I notice no change in time used to perform the dumpDir().
> >
> > The files I'm listing, was written before I defined short names in RAM. In
> > this case, should one expect the operation to take less time?
> >
> > The CPU I'm running this test on, is comparable to a Pentium I-200MHz.
> 
> 
> NB This only applies to yaffs_direct, not to Linux.
> 
> I did some tests using yaffs direct as a user application on a ram emulation
> under Linux.
> 
> This too showed slowing. I did some profiling with gprof which pretty quickly
> pointed to the problem...
> 
> The way yaffs does the directory searching is to create a linked list of
> items found so far in the DIR handle. When it does a read_dir, it has to walk
> the list of children in the directory and check if the entry in in the list
> of items found so far. This makes the look up time increase proportional to
> the square of the number of items found (O(n^2)) so far ( ie. each time it
> looks at more directory entries as well as compare them to a longer "already
> found" list).
> 
> The current implementation could be sped up somewhat by using a balanced
> binary tree for the "found list". This would reduce the time to O(n log n). I
> could be motivated to do something about this but it is not a current
> priority for me.
> 
> The other approach is the weasle approach. Don't use such large directories.
> but rather structure your directory tree to use smaller sub-directories.
> 
> -- Charles
> 
> 
> 
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