In article <20050120173208.GA12207@NetBSD.org>, Eduardo Horvath wrote:
> 
> Is the performance of manipulating a single direcory with 45,000
> entries even something we care about?

For some values of "we", yes.

> Who would ever put 45,000 files into a single directory?  Who would
> even put 100 files into a directory if getting a directory listing
> takes two or more screens just to display?

The only place I've seen it is in dysfunctional corporate
bureaucracies.  I previously had a job at Interwoven, which sells
licenses and support for (among other things) a program which
implements an NFS file system.  And there *were* customer companies
with idiot IT managers who insisted on creating directories with tens
or hundreds of thousands of files.  These files were (for the most
part) being manipulated by programs, which didn't mind that xterms
couldn't list the directory contents in a convenient way.

Obviously, I can't answer whether the "NetBSD Project" as a whole
cares about this sort of use case.  But there are people out there who
do.

  Alan