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Readdir-ahead

A similar prediction scheme could be used to prefetch lookup results for successive directories entries when performing a full directory read (as per V3's readdirplus). By first recognizing that the lookups calls follow the directory entries (from the directory cache), and then asynchronously prefetching the next several directory entries before they are actually needed, the perceived performance for a ls -l command might be dramatically improved. We have not yet attempted to implement this feature.



Greg Badros
1998-04-23