Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!TAURUS.BITNET!zifrony
From: zifrony@TAURUS.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Norton Commander  (or command utilities)
Message-ID: <722@taurus.BITNET>
Date: 4 May 88 19:29:46 GMT
References: <297@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> <4330055@hpindda.HP.COM> <449@dalcsug.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: <zifrony%TAURUS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Organization: Tel-Aviv Univesity Math and CS school, Israel
Lines: 34
Summary: Command utilities: A comfortable one.

In article <449@dalcsug.UUCP>, dalegass@dalcsug.BITNET writes:
> >I found XTREE unusable, even though it has a superior interface, and
> >better functionality.  XTREE scans *all* the disk directories as it
> >loads, which takes a *long* time on my turbo XT w/a 30 meg disk.  Norton
> >reads each directory as it goes there, which is much more efficient.
> >
> >>John Hardin

To that article, dalegass@dalcsug.uucp answered (Main comments):
>
> I agree that the scanning of the directories can take quite a bit of time.
> I was surprised and happy to learn that this time can be quite easily cut
> from 30 seconds to 3 seconds with a minimal effort.
>
> Since every directory must be read to start XTREE, it's performance can
> be dramatically increased by moving all your directories to the beginning
> of the hard disk, so there are minimal seek times involved in scanning
> the directories.

Why don't you guys try QUICK DOS 2.0.
This program does not scan the directories each time you enter it; rather,
a disk log file, containing all the necessary directory information is
stored in the root directory.  This allows the operation of QD2 to be very
efficient and quick (at the price of about 3000 bytes of disk space).
The only flaw in this arrangement, is that you have to create/remove your
directories using QD2, or rescan the disk after such changes are done outside
it.  I don't consider is as a serious flaw, as directory creation/removal is
not done too frequently.

Another important feature of QUICK DOS, available in version 1.0 as well, is
that upon return from execution of external programs (such as the DOS shell),
the directory information is not lost.  This feature does not exist in XTREE,
which forces the user to wait while a rescanning of the directories is made.

   Doron Zifrony    ---   zifrony@MATH.Tau.Ac.IL