Re: How many files to create in one directory?

Theodore Ts'o
2014-01-27T19:39:56Z

> It will depend on the length of the filenames. But by my calculations,
> for average 28-char filenames, it's closer to 30 million.

Note that there will be some very significant performance problems
well before a directory gets that big. For example, just simply doing
a readdir + stat on all of the files in that directory (or a readdir +
unlink, etc.) will very likely result in extremely unacceptable
performance.

So if you can find some other way of avoiding allowing the file system
that big (i.e., using a real database instead of trying to use a file
system as a database, etc.), I'd strongly suggest that you consider
those alternatives.

Regards,

- Ted