Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!percy!parsely!agora!billsey
From: billsey@agora.UUCP (Bill Seymour)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: AmigaDos directory knowledge
Message-ID: <1721@agora.UUCP>
Date: 28 Nov 89 03:38:07 GMT
References: <291@intersil.uucp:
Organization: Advanced Solutions, Hillsboro, OR
Lines: 30

From article <291@intersil.uucp:, by hamilton@intersil.uucp (Fred Hamilton):
: I just remembered a question I've had since WorkBench 1.0.  When you type
: a command like:
: 
: 	List c:edd     ;(A typo, for instance)
: 
: You get an (almost) instant response of "object not found".
: But if you type:
: 
: 	List c:ed#?
: 
: The OS thrashes throught the entire directory before giving you the list.
: 
: What's happening here?

	When you have the system look for a specific file (no wildcards) it
will use the hash value for that file in order to find the header block. If
there is no header at that hash, it kicks back very quickly. If you use a
wildcard, it has to search through each and every file header looking for
names that match the pattern.

: -- 
: Fred Hamilton                  Any views, comments, or ideas expressed here
: Harris Semiconductor           are entirely my own.  Even good ones.
: Santa Clara, CA
-- 
     -Bill Seymour             ...tektronix!reed!percival!agora!billsey
                               ...tektronix!sequent.UUCP!calvin!billsey
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