performance of fs::dir_exists

[xtimbeau]

I find a huge performance gap between fs::dir_exist() and base::dir.exists(). Is there a reason for that ?

Here is a reprex:

fs::dir_create("test")

bench::mark(
  base::dir.exists("test"),
  base::file.exists("test"),
  fs::dir_exists("test"),
  fs::file_exists("test"), check = FALSE)
#> # A tibble: 4 × 6
#>   expression                         min   median `itr/sec` mem_alloc `gc/sec`
#>   <bch:expr>                    <bch:tm> <bch:tm>     <dbl> <bch:byt>    <dbl>
#> 1 "base::dir.exists(\"test\")"     984ns   1.07µs   911414.        0B      0  
#> 2 "base::file.exists(\"test\")"   1.07µs   1.19µs   819353.        0B      0  
#> 3 "fs::dir_exists(\"test\")"    398.11µs 412.95µs     2248.    1.06MB     32.1
#> 4 "fs::file_exists(\"test\")"     7.63µs   8.04µs   121029.     3.3KB     24.2

^{Created on 2025-12-22 with reprex v2.1.1}