Is there a workaround for Java's poor performance on walking huge directories?

Question

I am trying to process files one at a time that are stored over a network. Reading the files is fast due to buffering is not the issue. The problem I have is just listing

Answer 1

I wonder why there are 10k files in a directory. Some file systems do not work well with so many files. There are specifics limitations for file systems like max amount of files per directory and max amount of levels of subdirectory.

I solve a similar problem with an iterator solution.

I needed to walk across huge directorys and several levels of directory tree recursively.

I try FileUtils.iterateFiles() of Apache commons io. But it implement the iterator by adding all the files in a List and then returning List.iterator(). It's very bad for memory.

So I prefer to write something like this:

private static class SequentialIterator implements Iterator {
    private DirectoryStack dir = null;
    private File current = null;
    private long limit;
    private FileFilter filter = null;

    public SequentialIterator(String path, long limit, FileFilter ff) {
        current = new File(path);
        this.limit = limit;
        filter = ff;
        dir = DirectoryStack.getNewStack(current);
    }

    public boolean hasNext() {
        while(walkOver());
        return isMore && (limit > count || limit < 0) && dir.getCurrent() != null;
    }

    private long count = 0;

    public File next() {
        File aux = dir.getCurrent();
        dir.advancePostition();
        count++;
        return aux;
    }

    private boolean walkOver() {
        if (dir.isOutOfDirListRange()) {
            if (dir.isCantGoParent()) {
                isMore = false;
                return false;
            } else {
                dir.goToParent();
                dir.advancePostition();
                return true;
            }
        } else {
            if (dir.isCurrentDirectory()) {
                if (dir.isDirectoryEmpty()) {
                    dir.advancePostition();
                } else {
                    dir.goIntoDir();
                }
                return true;
            } else {
                if (filter.accept(dir.getCurrent())) {
                    return false;
                } else {
                    dir.advancePostition();
                    return true;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    private boolean isMore = true;

    public void remove() {
        throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
    }

}

Note that the iterator stop by an amount of files iterateds and it has a FileFilter also.

And DirectoryStack is:

public class DirectoryStack {
    private class Element{
        private File files[] = null;
        private int currentPointer;
        public Element(File current) {
            currentPointer = 0;
            if (current.exists()) {
                if(current.isDirectory()){
                    files = current.listFiles();
                    Set set = new TreeSet();
                    for (int i = 0; i < files.length; i++) {
                        File file = files[i];
                        set.add(file);
                    }
                    set.toArray(files);
                }else{
                    throw new IllegalArgumentException("File current must be directory");
                }
            } else {
                throw new IllegalArgumentException("File current not exist");
            }

        }
        public String toString(){
            return "current="+getCurrent().toString();
        }
        public int getCurrentPointer() {
            return currentPointer;
        }
        public void setCurrentPointer(int currentPointer) {
            this.currentPointer = currentPointer;
        }
        public File[] getFiles() {
            return files;
        }
        public File getCurrent(){
            File ret = null;
            try{
                ret = getFiles()[getCurrentPointer()];
            }catch (Exception e){
            }
            return ret;
        }
        public boolean isDirectoryEmpty(){
            return !(getFiles().length>0);
        }
        public Element advancePointer(){
            setCurrentPointer(getCurrentPointer()+1);
            return this;
        }
    }
    private DirectoryStack(File first){
        getStack().push(new Element(first));
    }
    public static DirectoryStack getNewStack(File first){
        return new DirectoryStack(first);
    }
    public String toString(){
        String ret = "stack:\n";
        int i = 0;
        for (Element elem : stack) {
            ret += "nivel " + i++ + elem.toString()+"\n";
        }
        return ret;
    }
    private Stack stack=null;
    private Stack getStack(){
        if(stack==null){
            stack = new Stack();
        }
        return stack;
    }
    public File getCurrent(){
        return getStack().peek().getCurrent();
    }
    public boolean isDirectoryEmpty(){
        return getStack().peek().isDirectoryEmpty();
    }
    public DirectoryStack downLevel(){
        getStack().pop();
        return this;
    }
    public DirectoryStack goToParent(){
        return downLevel();
    }
    public DirectoryStack goIntoDir(){
        return upLevel();
    }
    public DirectoryStack upLevel(){
        if(isCurrentNotNull())
            getStack().push(new Element(getCurrent()));
        return this;
    }
    public DirectoryStack advancePostition(){
        getStack().peek().advancePointer();
        return this;
    }
    public File[] peekDirectory(){
        return getStack().peek().getFiles();
    }
    public boolean isLastFileOfDirectory(){
        return getStack().peek().getFiles().length <= getStack().peek().getCurrentPointer();
    }
    public boolean gotMoreLevels() {
        return getStack().size()>0;
    }
    public boolean gotMoreInCurrentLevel() {
        return getStack().peek().getFiles().length > getStack().peek().getCurrentPointer()+1;
    }
    public boolean isRoot() {
        return !(getStack().size()>1);
    }
    public boolean isCurrentNotNull() {
        if(!getStack().isEmpty()){
            int currentPointer = getStack().peek().getCurrentPointer();
            int maxFiles = getStack().peek().getFiles().length;
            return currentPointer < maxFiles;
        }else{
            return false;
        }
    }
    public boolean isCurrentDirectory() {
        return getStack().peek().getCurrent().isDirectory();
    }
    public boolean isLastFromDirList() {
        return getStack().peek().getCurrentPointer() == (getStack().peek().getFiles().length-1);
    }
    public boolean isCantGoParent() {
        return !(getStack().size()>1);
    }
    public boolean isOutOfDirListRange() {
        return getStack().peek().getFiles().length <= getStack().peek().getCurrentPointer();
    }

}