* Havard Eidnes <he@uninett.no> [050120 09:38] wrote:
> > Is the performance of manipulating a single direcory with
> > 45,000 entries even something we care about?  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?
> 
> Yes, I think we care or should care.
> 
> Think MH folder system or Maildir setup, and add in users who
> have an ever increasing number of messages in their folders.
> That's not exactly an uncommon usage scenario, at least in my
> surroundings.

A lot of systems are using "filesystem as a database" semantics
and just expect something like:

  user/key -> data

to scale indefinitely.

-- 
- Alfred Perlstein
- Research Engineering Development Inc.
- email: bright@mu.org cell: 408-480-4684