From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Nov 19 05:24:08 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1869E1065670 for ; Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:24:08 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan-freebsd-fs@ourbrains.org) Received: from ourbrains.org (li48-221.members.linode.com [66.246.76.221]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id A24C08FC14 for ; Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:24:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan-freebsd-fs@ourbrains.org) Received: (qmail 4368 invoked by uid 1000); 19 Nov 2008 05:24:28 -0000 Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:24:28 -0500 From: Dan To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20081119052428.GC4136@ourbrains.org> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Subject: (no subject) X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:24:08 -0000 A recent question came up about huge numbers of files in one directory. Well, some people actually have to deal with it on the job: http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2008-11/msg00070.html An FS doesn't have to be designed such that file look-ups take a very long time to search when directories are large. When a nice hash is used as part of the FS design, the time to search for 1 in a 100 files or 2 billion is the same. I view it as a feature. I can imagine a few cases where a large, non-human-readable directory is used to store many files. When developers know they have this feature at hand, they might as well use it. FS-based databases, image/sound editing, etc.