Re: [Nmh-workers] new command lacks lock

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ken,

> > A script that was using mark(1) was sluggish on a local-disk folder
> > with approx. 6,500 emails and many extra files after rmm, refile,
> > etc.  Deleting those, or using the script on a directory with less
> > inodes, was a lot snappier.
> 
> It would be nice to understand what was so sluggish; system call
> tracing would be interesting here.  Sadly, I think we're limited by
> the operating system here in many cases; some Unix filesystems simply
> don't behave well when dealing with a lot of files in a single
> directory.

It's Linux with ext4 on a local SATA hard disk.  Next time it's built up
enough to slug I'll have a look.  `ls -f' wasn't slow so I suspect some
per-item overhead in nmh.

> It seems that this behavior is generally what you want...

Agreed.  I wasn't trying to get it changed, just that its behaviour is
non-obvious and undocumented.  Yes, I know, patches welcome.  :-)

Cheers, Ralph.