walking a directory with very many files

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:29:21 -0400, Mel wrote:

> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> 
>>>> Ok, now pipe ls to less, take three days to browse through all the
>>>> filenames to locate the file you want to see.
>>> 
>>> Sounds like you're approaching the issue with a GUI-centric mentality,
>>> which is completely hopeless at dealing with this sort of situation.
>> 
>> Piping the output of ls to less is a GUI-centric mentality?
> 
> Yeah.  The "dump it on the user" idea, or more politely "can't decide
> anything until the user has seen everything" is evident in the most
> "characteristic" GUIs.


Perhaps you're using different GUIs to me. In my experience, most GUIs 
tend to *hide* data from the user rather than give them everything under 
the sun.

The classic example is Windows, which hides certain files in the GUI file 
manager even if you tell it to show all files.


-- 
Steven