Very Computer

My question is this:

        I would like to go through the contents of a directory,
filter out only the file extension I'm interested in, then sort
them in file creation order.

        I've looked at the man pages for scandir & dirent, and I
can't find anything that would let me sort on file creation time.

        Do I have to use scandir with a compare function that
opens each directory entry & calls fstat every time?
        I'm hoping their is a quicker & simpler way.

Thanks for your help

Indranil    

Quote:

>My question is this:

>    I would like to go through the contents of a directory,
>filter out only the file extension I'm interested in, then sort
>them in file creation order.

>    I've looked at the man pages for scandir & dirent, and I
>can't find anything that would let me sort on file creation time.

>    Do I have to use scandir with a compare function that
>opens each directory entry & calls fstat every time?
>    I'm hoping their is a quicker & simpler way.

>Thanks for your help

>Indranil    

 Ben

looking for admin/security work

  I would open the directory and read the entries, matching the entry name
against those that meet your extension criteria.

  Valid files I would stat and then load their information into one of the
aforementioned structures.  No need to actually open the file and incur the
additional overhead.

  Place this structure into a binary tree that is sorted by your field/value of
interest.

  When all pertinent files have been found do an inorder traversal of your
binary tree and your output is in the correct order.

 - Steve Rountree
+-------------------------------------------------+
| Incomprehensible?  But because you can not      |
| understand a thing, it does not cease to exist. |
|                                                 |
|                               - Pascal (1670)   |
+-------------------------------------------------+

  p = opendir(dirname);
  files = [SortedCollection new];
  while ( (e=readdir(p)) ) [files add:[Entry dirent:e]];
  closedir(p);

Quote:> ) >   I would open the directory and read the entries, matching the entry name
> ) > against those that meet your extension criteria.
> ) >
> ) >   Place this structure into a binary tree that is sorted by your
field/value of
> ) > interest.
> )
> ) This may also be a problem where a language such as C++ or Objective-C
> ) (see http://www.veryComputer.com/), may provide a
> ) reusable class, so that it's (a little bit) less work.  Like in ...
> )  
> )   p = opendir(dirname);
> )   files = [SortedCollection new];
> )   while ( (e=readdir(p)) ) [files add:[Entry dirent:e]];
> )   closedir(p);

Isn't popen inefficient? Sure, if this in a principal, innermost loop.
Otherwise, more cycles and programmer time have been consumed discussing
this than will ever be recoverred by the most efficient solution. It's a
hard lesson to learn, but the lesson is: don't waste time and effort by
optimising what is trivial.

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