OT - RE: [PHP] scalable web gallery

> -----Original Message----- > From: Daniel Brown [mailto:parasane@gmail.com] > Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 9:42 AM > To: paragasu > Cc: php-general@lists.php.net > Subject: Re: [PHP] scalable web gallery ---8<--- snip > And for the record, in the "olden days," there was a limit of > about 2048 files per directory, back when no one thought there would > ever be a need for nearly that many files. Then, with improved > filesystems, the limit was rumored to be another magic number: 65535. > That depended on the operating system, filesystem, and the kernel. I > think (but don't quote me on this) that BeOS had the 65535 limit. > > Now, on an ext3 filesystem (we're not counting ReiserFS because > (1) I was never a fan, and (2) he might kill me if I say something > bad! 8^O) you're okay with hundreds of thousands of files per > directory. ls'ing will be a bit of a pain in the ass, and if you're > in Bash, you probably don't want to double-TAB the directory, but all > in all, you'll be okay. > > Still, I'd create 16 subdirectories under the images directory: > 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e,f. Then name the file as an MD5 hash of > the image uploaded, and place it in the directory matching the first > character of the new file name. Aren't directory structures in Windows (>2.x) and even DOS (>4.x) built with B-Trees? I wouldn't figure there would be any kind of limit--excepting memory, of course--to how many files or subdirectories can be linked to a single node. Been a while since I've played with those underlying data structures we all take for granted, though, so maybe I'm way off base. Todd Boyd Web Programmer