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

[tachyon]

I bet you're going to run out of file handles.

I'll bet you I won't :-)

$ ulimit -HSn 8192

A file descriptor is really just an entry in a C array which is maintained by the OS. Although by default the size of that array is typically 512, 1024, .... or some other function of base 2 depending on OS etc you can make it virtually anything you want within reason. See this for some more details.