LHA files

Ayo ana Ho.

I save all my downloads to specific directories on my HDs.  When I open a download directory with a sizable number of lha files, it takes a long time to open and it eats up most of my A1200's chip ram, even tho I have 96 megs of fast ram.  Occasionally, I do not have sufficient chip ram to open and de-archive the files.  None of my non-archived directories do this.

I'm using fastexec in my startup to use fast ram first, but that seems to be ignored in these instances.  I've found ways around this, but why does it happen in the first place?

Can anyone impart some knowledge about this problem?

Thanks in advance.

[Hardboy]

I guess it´s because you open the directory in a window, in workbench. All the contents of the directory will consume chip-ram to, because of the window bitmap...

You could avoid this by using a CLI instead. KingCON: as a great alternative which has directory listing using the TAB key... Most file managers as DirectoryOpus are also alternatives to window browsing...

Hardboy, I use several different techniques, including DOpus and Unlha, so I can work with it, but I'm curious why listing a bunch of lha files uses so much chip memory when listing dearchived programs in a directory do not.

I can have a boatload of directories open without much memory loss, but one directory of archived stuff will bring down the house.

[Ilwrath]

Hello-
There's two problems you could be running into here, so I have a couple questions.

First off, how many files is "a sizable number"?  100? 1,000? 10,000?  

How are you opening the directory?  (Workbench, DirOPUS/DM, etc?)  If it's workbench you're using... It has to allocate the graphics for all the icons out of chip memory.  (And even though all the icons may be the same, each takes up a chunk of memory...  chip memory, if you don't have a graphics card.)

If you're using DirOPUS or something, that shouldn't be a problem, though.  But, it still has to keep all those file names in a buffer of some sort.  Try a directory caching program.  It should help in that case.  There is a good one on Aminet, but I forget it's name, as I haven't messed with my settings in a long time...

Ilwrath, I have under 50, maybe as few as 20 in some download directories.  They are all slow and ram-expensive.  The problem is when I open them thru WB.  Why wouldn't fastexec direct them to fastram?

I also list them in text, not icon format.  As I said, I can work around this but want to know why it happens.

Thanks

[Ilwrath]

Wow...  under 50 files shouldn't cause you any problems, one way, or another.  (The problems I was thinking of start with directories of over 200 files, or so...)  

Fastexec can't relocate everything to fast ram, as the computer can't function with all things in fast ram...  (Obviously, bitmapped images have to be in chip, etc...)  Also, as I understand it, fastexec is powerless against programs that just grab chipmem with less-than-compliant methods...  So perhaps that is what you're up against.

Are you running anything that tries to automatically act on .lha files?  Maybe some strange datatype or something in your startup?