[SunHELP] # of files per directory

[Nicholas Dronen]

On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 09:56:07AM -0700, Jon wrote:
> Does anybody know how many files/directories are allowed per directory 
> under Solaris 8?

IIRC, you can put as many files in a directory as the free
space in the filesystem will allow.  However, because directories
aren't indexed at all (that is, a search for a file in a directory
is linear), the amount of time it takes to find a file in a directory
is directly proportional to the number of files in the directory
itself.  It is wise to train your developers to design their
application's directory and file heirarchy with this limitation
in mind.

The Ext2 filesystem on Linux is in the process of getting directory
indexing, which makes such searches take considerably less time; I
wouldn't be surprised were UFS to follow suit, if Sun isn't working
on it already.

Regards,

Nicholas Dronen