From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu May 24 14:31:37 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from smtp02.primenet.com (smtp02.primenet.com [206.165.6.132]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4946A37B423 for ; Thu, 24 May 2001 14:31:20 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert@usr05.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp02.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA09851; Thu, 24 May 2001 14:30:55 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr05.primenet.com(206.165.6.205) via SMTP by smtp02.primenet.com, id smtpdAAA4RaiTs; Thu May 24 14:30:24 2001 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr05.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA22909; Thu, 24 May 2001 14:38:43 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200105242138.OAA22909@usr05.primenet.com> Subject: Re: technical comparison To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, nadav@cs.Technion.AC.IL, jandrese@mitre.org, acahalan@cs.uml.edu Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 21:38:43 +0000 (GMT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG ] Terry Lambert writes: ] ] > I don't understand the inability to perform the trivial ] > design engineering necessary to keep from needing to put ] > 60,000 files in one directory. ] > ] > However, we can take it as a given that people who need ] > to do this are incapable of doing computer science. ] ] One could say the same about the design engineering necessary ] to handle 60,000 files in one directory. You're making excuses. No, I'm not. I released trie patches for FreeBSD directory sotrage in 1995. No one thought they were very useful, because only morons would treat a filesystem as if it were a database, instead of using a database as a database. If you want to get technical, a filesystem is a form of a database... but it's a _hierarchical_ database, like DNS or LDAP, and trying to use it as a _relational_ database, with key/value pairs, is still a stupid idea. Use the right tool for the job. ] People _want_ to do this, and it often performs better on ] a modern filesystem. This is not about need; it's about ] keeping ugly hacks out of the app code. ] ] http://www.namesys.com/5_1.html I'm glad you said "people want to do this" instead of saying "computer professionals want to do this". The 60,000 file "benchmark" is meaningless to a properly designed system. ] > (the rationale behind this last is that people who can't ] > design around needing 60,000 files in a single directory ] > are probably going to to be unable to correctly remember ] > the names of the files they created, since if they could, ] > then they could remember things like ./a/a/aardvark or ] > ./a/b/abominable). ] ] Eeew. "./a/b/abominable" is a disgusting old hack used to ] work around traditional filesystem deficiencies. No, it's a hack to work around being too damn lazy to use a database where it makes sense to use a database. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message