>> All modern file-systems use either B-trees or B*-trees for
>> directories.

> As an aside, ext[234]fs do not, nor will they ever as far as I know. FFS
> does not. A lot of Polipo-using systems probably run atop those :/

Indeed, and I cannot understand why filesystems still use linear
search in directories.  I realise that system designers don't want to
use bleeding-edge algorithms, but hashtables have been known since the
late 1950s, B-tress since the early 1970s.

> (ext3fs and ext4fs have a hack whereby filenames are reordered such
> that they can be looked up by means of a hash lookup, which is just
> about as good for most purposes.)

And modern versions of Berklix will load the whole directory in
memory, where it is stored as a hash table.  But I still don't
understand why they're avoiding a proper data structure in the on-disk
format.

> That's the performance problem in Firefox, for what it's worth: the db
> fsync()s fairly frequency,

I don't quite agree with your analysis.  The performance problem with
Firefox is that it's written by a bunch of people who, when they have
a problem, think ``I know, I'll use a database.''  Now they have two
problems.

  http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsum.html

                                        Juliusz

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