Path: utzoo!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!bmers58!davem
From: davem@bmers58.UUCP (Dave Mielke)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: stat of i-node
Message-ID: <179@bmers58.UUCP>
Date: 1 Sep 89 23:34:12 GMT
References: <172@bmers58.UUCP> <19362@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: davem@bmers58.UUCP (Dave Mielke)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 10

In article <19362@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>fstat() is a very cheap operation.  stat() is a bit more expensive, but
>(with name cacheing) not all that bad.
The problem with fstat is that it requires an open which also does a
name lookup. This proves to be very slow when the directories get
large. I need a way to get the information that stat would return
without the expense of a name lookup. The i-node is the obvious key to
the data, but I am unaware of any primitive that gives an application
program direct access to the data via its actual key. I would
appreciate any assistence that anyone can offer.