What does ls do?

[Randall R Schulz]

Jens, Earnie,

One can also infer some of ls's or the Cygwin DLL's "stat" activities from 
their behavior.

I've observed that files that begin with "#!" will get tagged with an 
execute bit. Obviously the implication is that the file's contents are 
examined when the file is "stat"-ed, since the executability of #! scripts 
is not a Windows feature, but rather one that is emulated by the Cygwin DLL.

Thus an "ls -l" or "ls -F" or "ls -t" or any ls option that requires that 
files be "stat"-ed will be slow when applied to directories with lots of 
files. Likewise, virus scanners are also going to be triggered by a "stat" 
call. This will slow things down further...

Randall Schulz
Teknolwedge Corp.
Palo Alto, CA USA


At 10:08 AM 07/24/2000 , Earnie Boyd wrote:
>--- Jens Yllman <jens@uniweb.se> wrote:
> >  What does ls realy do? The reason I wonder is because I just noticed that
> > my virus program gets triggered for every file that is in the directory
> > that where I use ls. And all the file with the right(wrong) extension
> > get search by the virusprogram. And this makes ls very slow.
> >
>
>The best answer to your question about ls is "Use the source, Luke".  Your
>virus program must be triggered by a file being opened or even stat'ed.  If
>this is the case then all programs not just Cygwin ones will be affected.  The
>only cure that I've found is to disable the dynamic virus protection and
>periodically check your files for viruses.
>
>Cheers,
>
>   Earnie Boyd: < mailto:earnie_boyd@yahoo.com >


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