It’s about how and when they get used. Eg if you’re running on a lower performing mount then you might want to rely on caches more than frequent rescans. What I would often do on performance critical routines running against network mounts was store a tree of inodes and time stamps and only rescan a directory if the parents time stamp changed. It meant I’d miss any subsequent metadata changes to individual files (mtime, size, etc) but I would capture any new files being created. Which is the main thing I cared about so that was the trade off I was willing to make.

There’s no right or wrong answer here though. Just different designs for different problems. Which was also the point the other developer was making when he was talking about his memory usage.

> There’s no right or wrong answer here though.

The processor cache plays an important role which you are ignoring.

External storage devices: most of the time they are write-back and even equipped with read-ahead. Yes, I know there are some exceptions but if you are write-through non-read-ahead you _chose_ to be slow in your feedback already and this discussion doesn't even apply.

Network mounts: cache coherency rules apply to CIFS as well. And again, if you _choose_ to ignore/disable, you are OK to be slow and this discussion does not apply.

If `nnn` take n secs the first time, another utility will take around the same time on the first startup (from a cold boot).

Now the next scans where you go into subdirs would be much faster even in `nnn` due to locality of caching of the information about the files (try it out). The CPU cache already does an excellent job here. And if you go up, both `nnn` and the other utility would rescan.

> point the other developer was making

Yes, he was saying - my memory usage may be 15 times higher because of storing all filenames (in a static snapshot!!!) but you are dishonest if you show the numbers from `top` output without reading my code first for an education of my utility.

I’m not sure what you mean by processor cache here. The processor wouldn’t cache file system meta data. Kernels will, but that is largely dependant on the respective file system driver (eg none of the hobby projects I’ve written in FUSE had any caching).

Different write modes on external hardware also confuses the issue because you still have the slower bus speeds (eg a USB2 for an older memory stick) to and from the external device than you might have with dedicated internal hardware.

> The processor wouldn’t cache file system meta data

What _file system meta data_? The processor doesn't care what data it is! I am talking of the hw control plane and you are still lurching at pure software constructs like the kernel and its drivers.

All the CPU cares is the latest data fetched by a program. The CPU cache exists to store program instructions and _data_ (no matter where it comes from) used repeatedly in the operation of programs or information that the CPU is likely to need next. If the data is still available in the cacheline and isn't invalidated, CPU won't fetch it from an external unit (so bus request is not even made). _Any_ data coming to CPU sits in any Ln cache, source notwithstanding. The external memory is accessed in case of cache misses. However, the metadata these utilities fetch is very very less and the probability is greatly reduced. Moreover, your hypothetical utility also banks on the assumption that this data won't change and it wouldn't have to issue too many rescans to remain performant.

It's the same thing you see when you copy a 2 GB file from a slow storage to SSD and the first time it's slow but the next time it's way faster.

You can see it for yourself. Run `nnn` on any external disk you are having (with a lot of data preferably), navigate to the mounpoint, press `^J` (1. notice the time taken), move to a subdir, come back to mountpoint again (2. notice the time taken). You would see what I mean.

> none of the hobby projects I’ve written in FUSE had any caching

On a side note (and though not much relevant here), all serious drivers (e.g. those from Tuxera, btrfs) maintain buffer cache (https://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/buffer-cache.html). They always boost performance. If our Ln misses, this is where we would get the metadata from and _hopefully_ not from the disk which is the worst case.

Yeah, that’s the kernel caching that (as I described) not some hardware specific thing the CPU is doing. Not disagreeing with you that L1 and L2 cache does exist on the CPU (and L3 in some instances) but it is much too small to hold the kind of data you’re suggesting. It’s really the kernel freeable memory (or file system driver - eg in the case if ZFS) where file system data - inc file contents too - will be cached. The CPU cache is much more valuable for application data to fill with file system meta data (in my personal opinion, you might override that behaviour in nnn but I’d hope not)

However regardless of where that cache is, it’s volatile, it’s freeable. And thus you cannot guarantee it will be there when you need it. Particularly on systems with less system memory (remember that’s one of your target demographics).

If you wanted though, you could easily check if a particular file is cached and if not, perform the rescan. I can’t recall the APIs to do that off hand but it would be platform specific and not all encompassing (eg ZFS cache is separate to the kernels cache on Linux and FreeBSD) so it wouldn’t be particularly reliable nor portable. Plus depending on the syscall used, you might find it’s more overhead than an actual refresh on all but a rare subset of edge cases. As an aside, this is why I would build my own cache. Sure it cost more RAM but it was cheaper in the long run - fewer syscalls, less kernel/user space memory swapping, easier to track what is in cache and what is not, etc. But obviously the cost is I lose precision with regards to when a cache goes stale.

While on the topic of stale caches, I’ve actually ran into issues on SunOS (or was it Linux? I used a lot of platforms back then) where contents on an NFS volume could be updated on one host but various other connected machines wouldn’t see the updated file without doing a ‘touch’ on that file from those machines. So stale caches is something that can affect the host as well.

> but it is much too small to hold the kind of data you’re suggesting

My toy has a 3 MB L1 cache, 8 MB L2. You'll notice from the same figures that the resident memory usage of `nnn` was 3616 KB. And in the default start (not du) right now the figure is:

      PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                
    23034 vaio      20   0   14692   3256   2472 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 nnn -c 1 -i

So it required around 350 KB for `du`. Oh yes, it can be cached at will.

> check if a particular file is cached and if not

I am a userland utility. I don't add deps on fs drivers (and maintain redundant code... I discourage code bloat as much as feature bloat) when standard APIs are available to read, write, stat.

> However regardless of where that cache is, it’s volatile, it’s freeable.

Yes!!! The worst case! And the worst case for you is where all dirs have changed. There you issue rescan, `nnn` issues rescan. `nnn` is accurate because it doesn't omit independent files for _personal_ optimization preferences. You do. You show _stale_, _wrong_ info in the worst case.

3MB is not enough to store the kind of data you’re talking about. In your example you were coping files from an SSD to a removable device; what happens if that file is 4MB big? Or 20MB?

Some program executables are multiple megabytes in size these days, your CPU cache is much more valuable storing that than it is storing a random 20MB XLSX file you happened to copy half an hour earlier. ;)

> You do. You show wrong info in the worst case.

Yes, I’d repeatedly said that myself. However I was making a case study rather than giving a lecture on how your tool should be written. Remember when I said “there is no right or wrong answer”? (You have ignored my point that you cannot guarantee the kernels / fs drivers cache isn’t also stale though. That does happen in some rare edge cases).

My point is you shouldn’t be so certain that you’re method is the best because there are plenty of scenarios when accuracy and low memory usage is more costly (eg the fastest file copying tools are those that buffer data - costing more RAM during usage). Plus let’s not forget that syscalls are expensive too. But that’s the trade off you take and that is what is advantageous for the perpose you’re targeting nnn for.

So there really isn’t a right or wrong answer here at all and memory usage is in fact only a very small part of the equation (which is what the other projects author what trying to say).

> Some program executables are multiple megabytes in size these days

I have shared the figures from my system right now in my earlier comment. The memory required for the meta info is extremely cache-able.

And yes, let's call it a day now. In fact, I am happy we had a very informative discussion towards the end. This is what I expected from the other dev and you from the very beginning. I am always ready for a productive non-abusive technical discussion. And if I find someday `ncdu` takes comparable/lesser memory than `nnn` I will update that data verbatim as well. But I wouldn't take uncalled-for shitstorm in public forums from strangers lying low.

But that’s what you’re storing in the system memory, not CPU cache. Ok let’s say the kernel does cache recently accessed memeory in the L2 cache, you’re still competing with everything else - particularly in a multi-user or multi-threaded system. So that is not going to stay in L2 for long.

You’re making so many assumptions about the host platform and they simply don’t stack up for the majority of cases - it’s just that most systems are fast enough to hide your incorrect assumptions.

Also your understanding of how file system caching works is completely off. Granted that’s not something most normal engineers need to worry about, but given the claims you’re making about nnn, I would suggest you spend a little time researching the fundamentals here.

Edit:

> I am happy we had a very informative discussion towards the end. This is what I expected from the other dev

That was exactly what the other dev was doing. You just weren’t ready to listen to him - which is why I started making comments about your “narky” replies. ;)

Well, I shared the numbers, I gave you ways to test it. We are done here.

but You’re not proving that the data you are expecting to be in L2 actually ends up in L2. Let alone persists long enough to be recalled from L2 when you do your rescans. Your test is crude and thus doesn’t prove anything. Which is what we have all been telling you right from the start!!!!

You cannot just throw numbers up and say “look I’m right” if the test of flawed from the outset.

But yes, it’s probably better we do call it a day.

I expected you would run the test. Anyway, here's the data and it aligns with my expectation and figures.

  ## Fired `nnn` in my home dir.
     - all cached, no major page faults
  
  ~$ /usr/bin/time -v nnn
  	Command being timed: "nnn"
  	User time (seconds): 0.00
  	System time (seconds): 0.00
  	Percent of CPU this job got: 0%
  	Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:03.77
  	Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
  	Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
  	Average stack size (kbytes): 0
  	Average total size (kbytes): 0
  	Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 3400
  	Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
  	Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
  	Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 274
  	Voluntary context switches: 6
  	Involuntary context switches: 1
  	Swaps: 0
  	File system inputs: 0
  	File system outputs: 0
  	Socket messages sent: 0
  	Socket messages received: 0
  	Signals delivered: 0
  	Page size (bytes): 4096
  	Exit status: 0
  ~$
  
  ## Fired `nnn` on an external disk root in du mode, went into a subdir, came back to root.
     - no major page faults
     - File system inputs: 14680
     - 220 KB cached extra
  
  ~$ /usr/bin/time -v nnn -S /media/vaio/49462fdf-010c-40cc-89db-ef125e7dae99/tmp/
  	Command being timed: "nnn -S /media/vaio/49462fdf-010c-40cc-89db-ef125e7dae99/tmp/"
  	User time (seconds): 0.02
  	System time (seconds): 0.27
  	Percent of CPU this job got: 3%
  	Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:08.30
  	Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
  	Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
  	Average stack size (kbytes): 0
  	Average total size (kbytes): 0
  	Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 3620
  	Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
  	Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
  	Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 337
  	Voluntary context switches: 576
  	Involuntary context switches: 2
  	Swaps: 0
  	File system inputs: 14680
  	File system outputs: 0
  	Socket messages sent: 0
  	Socket messages received: 0
  	Signals delivered: 0
  	Page size (bytes): 4096
  	Exit status: 0
  ~$
  
  ## Fired `nnn` again (around 2 mins later, I was formatting the above text) on the external disk root in du mode.
     - File system inputs: 0
  
  ** So even between 2 distinct instances of nnn, _all_ the data fetched in the first instance remained cached.
  
  ~$ /usr/bin/time -v nnn -S /media/vaio/49462fdf-010c-40cc-89db-ef125e7dae99/tmp/
  	Command being timed: "nnn -S /media/vaio/49462fdf-010c-40cc-89db-ef125e7dae99/tmp/"
  	User time (seconds): 0.00
  	System time (seconds): 0.01
  	Percent of CPU this job got: 0%
  	Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:02.31
  	Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
  	Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
  	Average stack size (kbytes): 0
  	Average total size (kbytes): 0
  	Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 3616
  	Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
  	Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
  	Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 329
  	Voluntary context switches: 5
  	Involuntary context switches: 0
  	Swaps: 0
  	File system inputs: 0
  	File system outputs: 0
  	Socket messages sent: 0
  	Socket messages received: 0
  	Signals delivered: 0
  	Page size (bytes): 4096
  	Exit status: 0
  ~$

Yes, I know there is a cache. I went into great detail about it. That wasn’t what I asked you to prove.

What we were arguing about was the L2 cache - which you argued could hold a 2GB file (insanity I call it) and you’re still not proving that point of yours. In fact you’re not even checking if it’s cached in the system memory (there are syscalls to do that), you’re just checking application performance. While it’s pretty obvious that result would have been due to caching it would have been easy to prove that more conclusively by even just flushing the cache (I assume you actually know how to do that? Hint: you can just write to the /proc directory from your shell to do that. It’s easy) and then repeating the test; but You didn’t even do that!

You’re testing is so rudimentary at covering the cases you’re making claims against it’s laughable. you’ve not even begun to address the “processor memory” point you were arguing.

But I honestly think we should just leave it here. You don’t need to be an expert in kernel design nor practical experience in write file systems to write a decent file manager, so all of this arguing is pointless. I just ask that you aren’t so quick to judge other solutions when it’s painfully obvious there are massive gaps in your own understanding.

I think you are referring to where I mentioned a large file copied second time. That is cached in RAM (I have 6GB) and not in L2. I think it's pretty clear from the context that I was emphasizing disk IO is not involved which was your main point of concern.

- which you argued could hold a 2GB file

No I didn't say that! I've always meant the metadata (that nnn needs) cache which I proved above. Clearly there's some misunderstanding.