[wellylug] ls capacity

[Martin Baehr]

On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 03:42:42PM +1300, Grant McLean wrote:
> As far as I'm aware, there is no limit on the number of
> files you can have in a directory (beyond the physical 
> capacity of the filesystem and perhaps a 2GB limit on the
> size of the '.' special file).  However the more files that
> a directory contains, the slower it will be to open any
> given one of them.

that depends on your filesystem.
with reiserfs the accesstime is independent from the number of directory
entries. ext2/3 is expected to improve too.

> It is possible that if you had a lot of files in a 
> directory, that you might exceed the maximum allowable
> command line length.  Although I've managed to exceed
> the DOS (or Windows) command length limitations, I haven't
> managed to break a Linux shell in the same way.  I couldn't
> find any reference to a maximum command length limitation
> of the 'bash' shell so I kicked of a little test a few
> minutes ago.  It's up to 35000 characters and still going.

here is an article con the subject.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6060

it esplains various solutions of which some were mentioned here
but also touches on the kernel side of things.

the argument length is a kernel limitation, not a bash one
e.g. hurd has no limit there.

greetings, martin.
-- 
interested in doing pike programming, sTeam/caudium/pike/roxen training,      
sTeam/caudium/roxen and/or unix system administration anywhere in the world.
--
pike programmer     working in europe                             csl-gmbh.net
                    open-steam.org     (www.archlab|(www|db).hb2).tuwien.ac.at
unix                bahai.or.at                       iaeste.(tuwien.ac|or).at
systemadministrator (stuts|black.linux-m68k).org        is.(schon.org|root.at)
Martin Bähr         http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get 128 Bit SSL Encryption!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/CBxunD/vN2EAA/xGHJAA/0XFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

  .-.   Wellington
  /V\   Linux
 // \\  Users       
/(   )\ Group
 ^^-^^
        http://wlug.paradise.net.nz/

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wellylug-unsubscribe at egroups.com
  

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/