how to navigate directories with heaps of files

how to navigate directories with heaps of files

My Linux file system has tens of thousands of files per directory. Viewing a list of all the files takes a few minutes for my system to calculate, which is too slow. But I am not sure what files are in each directory so want to view a list of the first few, like what the head command does for large files. Is there a command that efficiently does this?

Asked by: Guest | Views: 367

Total answers/comments: 2

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bert [Entry]

Try ls -f which does not sort.

bert [Entry]

"If you want to list N first entries,
I would just create a small C program that does an opendir call and then N calls to readdir"