[PATCH] improve performance of stat() operations (e.g. ls -lR )

[Don Bowman]

Conrad Scott wrote:

>A (possibly related) note, it occurred to me the other day (as I looked at
>some strace output) that opening the file during stat() --- so that you can
>call GetFileInformationByHandle() --- will be slow if you've got an
>anti-virus program running since they tend to intercept file opens. Then
>again, I don't understand enough about cygwin *or* win32 to understand
>whether you can get the same information without opening the file. Thus it
>might be a win to avoid opening the file if possible on ntsf too (w/
ntsec).

That's probably what's happening to me. I was trying to figure out why
the open read the file in a seemingly random fashion. I'm running 
Norton anti-virus.

I think Corinna's idea is pretty good, to skip the check entirely if
the results are obvious for the given filesystem.
Its also conceivable a user may not care to check for hard links
(do I use them? Not that I'm aware of).