(no subject)

[Dan]

A recent question came up about huge numbers of files in one directory.
Well, some people actually have to deal with it on the job:

http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2008-11/msg00070.html

An FS doesn't have to be designed such that file look-ups take a very
long time to search when directories are large. When a nice hash is used
as part of the FS design, the time to search for 1 in a 100 files or 2 
billion is the same. I view it as a feature. I can imagine a few cases
where a large, non-human-readable directory is used to store many files.
When developers know they have this feature at hand, they might as well
use it. FS-based databases, image/sound editing, etc.