[erlang-questions] Fast directory walker

[Mikael Pettersson]

Stanislaw Klekot writes:
 > On Fri, Dec 09, 2016 at 11:15:58PM +0000, Frank Muller wrote:
 > > I would like to improve the speed of my directory walker.
 > > 
 > > walk(Dir) ->
 > >     {ok, Files} = prim_file:list_dir(Dir),
 > >     walk(Dir, Files).
 > 
 > Why prim_file:list_dir() instead of file:list_dir()? The former is
 > undocumented internal function.

list_dir can be a very time-consuming operation, and in those cases
using file:list_dir would block the single file server for everything
else.  We routinely use prim_file:list_dir to reduce the negative
effects of accessing large directories.