Windows' mysterious built-in quick directory find

[Paul]

I have some code that recursively searches through a root directory on
another machine for a single directory with a particular name. It works as
expected but given the large size of the structure it takes on average about
7 seconds. If I use Explorer instead, the whole search takes 12 seconds, but
the result I'm looking for always pops up almost instantly.

I'd really like to be able to return the first search hit in less than a
second in my own app. Is it even possible to hook into whatever trick
Windows is using to be that fast?

Paul

 

[Paul]

Found the trick... recursive is bad for searching at least in this
particular case. Changed to per-level iterative and now it's very fast, on
the order of milliseconds. I'd be willing to bet Windows does the same
thing.

Paul

 

[Guest]

Could you post some skeleton code for your solution? Thanks.