$ ls ./dir_with_huge_amount_of_files/errors/
Suppose a directory is full of pictures with unix timestamps, I mean a lot measured in many GBs or even more. Shell-commands like ls will get overflow-style warnings because they are not designed to work with millions (or more) of pictures. How can I manage such huge amount of files? If, for example, I want to find the picture in the middle (according to the timestamp in the name and creation time), is there some file-system that offers a built-in search feature? Which commands would you use? I tried the comfortable ls and find with necessary flags but they were either very slow or generated warnings so I am thinking that either I need better file-system or db or something like that to pre-index the pictures. I basically need one array to which inodes of the photos should be placed in chronological order. How to do that? Later, metadata with unix-timestamps could be added.
[Update]
There is a serious flaw in current answers, people just post sort-of-answers without empirical tests. If they had tested their suggestions, they would probably fail. Hence, I created you a command-line tool by which you can create the sandbox to create the huge amount of files and test your suggestions like with 1e7 amount of files. It can take a long time to generate the files so be patient. If someone knows quicker way to do this, please edit the code. Type python code.py --help to get the help. Have fun!
Usage Example to create a lot of dirred files
$ ls ./data2
ls: ./data2: No such file or directory
$ python testFill.py -n 3 -d 7
$ tree data2/
data2/
|-- 0
| |-- 1302407302636973
| |-- 1302407302638022
| `-- 1302407302638829
|-- 1
| |-- 1302407302639604
| |-- 1302407302641652
| `-- 1302407302642399
|-- 2
| |-- 1302407302643158
| |-- 1302407302645223
| `-- 1302407302646026
|-- 3
| |-- 1302407302646837
| |-- 1302407302649110
| `-- 1302407302649944
|-- 4
| |-- 1302407302650771
| |-- 1302407302652921
| `-- 1302407302653685
|-- 5
| |-- 1302407302654423
| |-- 1302407302656352
| `-- 1302407302656992
`-- 6
|-- 1302407302657652
|-- 1302407302659543
`-- 1302407302660156
7 directories, 21 files
Code testFill.py
# Author: hhh
# License: ISC license
import os, math, time, optparse, sys
def createHugeAmountOfFiles(fileAmount, dirAmount):
counter = 0
DENSITY = 1e7
dir = "./data/"
do = dir+str(counter)+"/"
while (os.path.exists(do)):
counter = counter+1
do = dir+str(counter)+"/"
os.mkdir(do)
for d in range(int(dirAmount)):
for f in range(int(fileAmount)):
timeIt = int(time.time()*1e6)
if (not os.path.exists(do)):
os.mkdir(do)
if (timeIt % DENSITY == 0):
counter = counter+1
do = dir+str(counter)+"/"
if (not os.path.exists(do)):
os.mkdir(do)
do = dir+str(counter)+"/"
if(not os.path.exists(do)):
os.mkdir(do)
f = open(do+str(timeIt), 'w')
f.write("Automatically created file to test Huge amount of files.")
f.close()
counter = counter +1
def ls(dir):
for root, dirs, files in os.walk("./data/"+dir):
print(files)
def rm(dir):
for root, dirs, files in os.walk("./data/"+dir):
for f in files:
os.remove("./data/"+dir+"/"+f)
def parseCli():
parser = optparse.OptionParser()
parser.add_option("-f", "--file", dest="filename",
help="Location to remove files only in ./Data.", metavar="FILE")
parser.add_option("-n", "--number", dest="number",
help="Number of files to generate", metavar="NUMBER")
parser.add_option("-r", "--remove", dest="remove",
help="Data -dir content to remove", metavar="NUMBER")
parser.add_option("-d", "--dir", dest="dir",
help="Amount of dirs to generate", metavar="NUMBER")
parser.add_option("-q", "--quiet",
action="store_false", dest="verbose", default=True,
help="don't print status messages to stdout")
return parser.parse_args()
def main():
(options, args) = parseCli()
if (options.filename):
ls(options.filename)
if (options.number and options.dir):
createHugeAmountOfFiles(options.number, options.dir)
if (options.remove):
rm(options.remove)
main()
a/b/abcdef.jpg