Which goes faster on Linux/Unix?
du -b file.dat
or:
stat -c %s file.dat
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1Isn't this something you could Just Try™?– jtbandesJul 18, 2011 at 0:05
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I have tried it, and the results are sometimes inconsistent, that's why I'm asking other people.– MattJul 18, 2011 at 16:48
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2 Answers
It seems du is slightly faster in this example.
$ time bash -c 'for ((i=1; i<1000;i++)); do stat -c %s file1 >/dev/null; done'
real 0m3.588s
user 0m0.120s
sys 0m0.344s
$ time bash -c 'for ((i=1; i<1000;i++)); do du -b file1 >/dev/null; done'
real 0m3.161s
user 0m0.092s
sys 0m0.360s
But personally, I'd prefer to use stat, because most people use stat to retrieve basic information of a single file. So it's more likely stat will be optimized for such jobs in future.
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Here is stat: "real 0m2.183s" and here is du: "real 0m1.940s".. My file is 500MB [taken from /dev/zero], so I guess du is faster..– MattJul 18, 2011 at 16:49
You can use the time command to find out:
time du -b file.dat
time stat -c %s file.dat
