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using FileNames[] on large, deep directories

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg99372] using FileNames[] on large, deep directories
• From: Michael <michael2718 at gmail.com>
• Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 06:00:08 -0400 (EDT)

Hi again,

I ran into a problem today using FileNames[] and was wondering if
anybody else has encountered this problem before, and if so how they
solved the problem.

The problem is that FileNames can potentially take a long time to run
- in my case it took about 2 hours.  This is because it was reading
the file structure of a DVD and one particular sub-directory had an
enormous number of files scattered across about 80 directories.  A
simple option to exclude the directory would have saved about 1.9
hours of run-time.

I'm assuming I could just solve the problem by manually recursing
directories and building up the filelist using FileNames[] for each
directory, but it seems like it would be a lot cleaner if FileNames[]
had additional options similar to the 'find' command (e.g. prune).

--Michael

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: using FileNames[] on large, deep directories
    • From: Leonid Shifrin <lshifr@gmail.com>