python 2.7.12 on Linux behaving differently than on Windows

[BartC]

On 06/12/2016 12:26, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 10:56 PM, BartC <bc at freeuk.com> wrote:
>> In that directory (which was on Windows but accessible via a virtual Linux),
>> typing any Linux command followed by * would have required all 3.4 million
>> directory entries to be accessed in order to build a 3.4 million-element
>> argv list. I've no idea how long that would have taken.
>
> I just asked Python to build me a 4-million-element list, and it took
> no visible time - a small fraction of a second. Don't be afraid of
> large argument lists. We're not writing 8088 Assembly Language
> programs in 64KB of working memory here.

Haven't people been saying that Unix has been doing this for 40 years?

Some systems /did/ have little memory, and while there won't have been 
the capacity for that many files, some file devices were slow.

-- 
Bartc