file system iteration

[Georg Brandl]

Jonathan Hartley wrote:
> Georg Brandl wrote:
>  >> Which application needs to walk over ALL files?
> 
> How about 'updatedb' for starters, the index-maintainer for the common 
> *nix command-line utility 'locate'.
> 
> I'm pretty sure that os.walk( ) deals with symbolic links (by not 
> visiting them) and ' /proc'  type complexities by not doing anything to 
> walked directories that '/proc' type entries cannot deal with. I think 
> (no sarcasm intended) the point of offering a directory-like interface 
> to '/proc' was so one can perform directory-like operations on it.

Sure, and I don't say that this is not useful.

But for all applications mentioned in the thread (virus scanning, searching
for a file by name, updating the locate db), including /proc is not very
useful, to say the least.

Georg