Re: ls -l|head seems to look at all files in directory

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Reuben Thomas (address@hidden) wrote:
> On Mon, 25 May 2009, Jim Meyering wrote:
> 
> >To do what he wants you have to know that ls -1U is the only
> >way to get one output entry per readdir call.
> >
> >Reuben, you want to do it like this:
> >
> > ls -1U|head|xargs ls -l
> 
> Thanks for the hint about -1, but this doesn't seem to make any difference: 
> I run "ls -1U|head" in a directory with lots of files (about 10,000) and it 
> pauses for a minute or so before giving me my ten lines of output.
> 
> If I run the command again, then of course it runs almost instantly, so I'm 
> not sure what use the loops are in the tests you give.

Are all the files just normal files - or are any symlinks to other
directories or mount points?

Dave
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