Working with large directories

[Andras Simon]

2012/3/16, Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com>:
> I have two very large directories.
>
> One an rsync of all the RFCs and that is up to 6456 files.  But all the
> Internet Drafts (including all expired ones) is 72,509 files.  Then I
> have a number of large directories with IEEE 802 documents, but rarely
> over 3,000 per WG/year (eg ..../802.15/11/ for .15 document numbers
> assigned in 2011).
>
> So anyway, Nautilus takes forever to list these directories and at times
> I just want to look for a particular file by string in the name.  Is
> there a fast graphic tool for this?  Then when I find the desired file,
> I typically open it in Firefox.
>

I don't know how fast it is on such big directories, but you could try
emacs dired. Once you have the directory listed, searching (normal or
incremental and/or regexp search) will be blazingly fast. And perhaps
view the files from within emacs with w3m (although I'm pretty sure
that Firefox can be arranged).

Andras