On 31Jan2010 16:23, Kyp <k...@stsci.edu> wrote: | On Jan 31, 2:44 pm, Peter Otten <__pete...@web.de> wrote: | > Kyp wrote: | > > I have a dir with a large # of files that I need to perform operations | > > on, but only needing to access a subset of the files, i.e. the first | > > 100 files. | > > Using glob is very slow, so I ran across iglob, which returns an | > > iterator, which seemed just like what I wanted. I could iterate over | > > the files that I wanted, not having to read the entire dir. [...] | > > So the iglob was faster, but accessing the first file took about the | > > same time as glob.glob. | > | > > Here's some code to compare glob vs. iglob performance, it outputs | > > the time before/after a glob.iglob('*.*') files.next() sequence and a | > > glob.glob('*.*') sequence. | > | > > #!/usr/bin/env python | > | > > import glob,time | > > print '\nTest of glob.iglob' | > > print 'before iglob:', time.asctime() | > > files = glob.iglob('*.*') | > > print 'after iglob:',time.asctime() | > > print files.next() | > > print 'after files.next():', time.asctime() | > | > > print '\nTest of glob.glob' | > > print 'before glob:', time.asctime() | > > files = glob.glob('*.*') | > > print 'after glob:',time.asctime() | > | > > Here are the results: | > | > > Test of glob.iglob | > > before iglob: Sun Jan 31 11:09:08 2010 | > > after iglob: Sun Jan 31 11:09:08 2010 | > > foo.bar | > > after files.next(): Sun Jan 31 11:09:59 2010 | > | > > Test of glob.glob | > > before glob: Sun Jan 31 11:09:59 2010 | > > after glob: Sun Jan 31 11:10:51 2010 | > | > > The results are about the same for the 2 approaches, both took about | > > 51 seconds. Am I doing something wrong with iglob? | > | > No, but iglob() being lazy is pointless in your case because it uses | > os.listdir() and fnmatch.filter() underneath which both read the whole | > directory before returning anything. | > | > > Is there a way to get the first X # of files from a dir with lots of | > > files, that does not take a long time to run? | > | > Here's my attempt. [...open directory and read native format...]
I'd be inclined first to time os.listdir('.') versus glob.lgo('*.*'). Glob routines tend to lstat() every matching name to ensure the path exists. That's very slow. If you just do os.listdir() and choose your 100 nmaes, you only need to stat (or just try to open) them. So time glob.glob("*.*") versus os.listdir(".") first. Generally, with a large directory, stat time will change performance immensely. -- Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au> DoD#743 http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/ Usenet is essentially a HUGE group of people passing notes in class. --R. Kadel -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list