Re^2: Performance Trap - Opening/Closing Files Inside a Loop

[EverLast]

... Many filesystems (e.g., ext2/3) bog down once you start getting more than a hundred or so entries in a directory.

Actually, I have found VFAT to pale in comparison to ext3 and even ext2. ReiserFS should be even better i've heard. YMMV, of course - RAM/processor(s) etc.

Update:

A well-known approach to this 'many files' problem is to create a n-level directory structure based on filenames. File abc goes into a/b/abc, def goes into d/e/def etc. (for n=2). Filenames are then typically randomly generated - and if they're not you can use some transformation to create input for the directory. Reportedly, ReiserFS does this internally.

---Lars

[dragonchild]

CPAN does something similar. For example, my uploads are placed in http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/R/RK/RKINYON/. Only the few few authors are actually in the authors directory. The rest of us are in the id directory. :-)