walking a directory with very many files

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message <mailman.1560.1245011753.8015.python-list at python.org>, Andre 
Engels wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 6:35 PM, tom<fsb at thefsb.org> wrote:
>
>> in other languages one can avoid generating such an object by walking
>> a directory as a liked list.

I suppose it depends how well-liked it is. Nerdy lists may work better, but 
they tend not to be liked.

> What kind of directories are those that just a list of files would
> result in a "very large" object? I don't think I have ever seen
> directories with more than a few thousand files...

I worked on an application system which, at one point, routinely dealt with 
directories containing hundreds of thousands of files. But even that kind of 
directory contents only adds up to a few megabytes.