Re: find & the use of stat

[Andreas Schwab]

address@hidden (Brent Rogers) writes:

|> As mentioned in the README file concerning stat:
|> 
|> To gain speed, GNU find avoids statting files whenever possible.
|> It does this by:
|> 1. Checking the number of links to directories and not statting files that
|>    it knows aren't directories until it encounters a test or action that
|>    needs the stat info.
|> 2.  Rearranging the command line, where possible, so that it can do tests
|>     that don't require a stat before tests that do, in hopes that the
|>     latter will be skipped because of an OR or AND.  (But it only does
|> this where it will leave the output unchanged.)
|> 
|> Where can I get a list of the options to "find" that do use "stat"?

Anything that needs more than the name of a directory entry has to use
stat.  Grep for need_stat in parser.c, it defaults to true and the
predicates that don't need stat set it to false.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, address@hidden
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