GNU bug report logs - #35531
problem with ls in coreutils

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From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Peter Edwards <no-spam <at> optusnet.com.au>, 35531 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#35531: problem with ls in coreutils
Date: Fri, 10 May 2019 03:12:18 -0700

tag 35531 notabug
close 35531
stop

On 03/05/19 17:01, Peter Edwards wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Although this bug report seems to be a problem with the windows port
> of ls, it reminded me of an interesting investigation into slow ls
> speeds due to colorizing via the LS_COLORS environment variable.
> 
> See 
> https://news.sherlock.stanford.edu/posts/when-setting-an-environment-variable-gives-you-a-40-x-speedup
> 
> I thought it an interesting case study.

Thanks for the info.

In summary, to speed up ls color induced processing significantly,
disable stat() and getxattr() calls with:
  LS_COLORS='ex=00:su=00:sg=00:ca=00:'

A general point though is that colors are for human processing,
and how fast can one process the output from ls :)
I.E. if ls is being written to pipe/file or somewhere where
speed may be important, the coloring is disabled by default anyway.

cheers,
Pádraig

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