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From: andyp@treehouse.UUCP (Andy Peterman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: The Beauty of HFS
Message-ID: <687@treehouse.UUCP>
Date: 31 Jan 91 20:00:39 GMT
References: <1CE00001.2uro9z@tbomb.ice.com>
Organization: The Treehouse
Lines: 29

In article <1CE00001.2uro9z@tbomb.ice.com> time@ice.com writes:
>
>In article <48627@apple.Apple.COM>, heksterb@Apple.COM (Ben Hekster) writes:
>> > What's so ugly about HFS?  I don't see any problems with the programming
>> > ...etc...
>
>Performance may be better, I have no data on that, but I do know that
>the Mac HFS starts to really choke when a directory begins to contain
>hundreds of files. I have not had time to research things, but we
>have seen a couple of cases where the Mac was disabled because it
>could not seem to deal with the enormous number of files in a directory
>(several hundred if I remember correctly).

I don't think that it's HFS that's choking but rather Finder that can't
deal with the large number of files.  I have a CD ROM (The Right
Stuffed) that has some folders with over 500 files and have no problem
with them when using a Finder alternative (MacTree Plus).  I don't
remember where, but I think I've seen folders with over 1000 files
and havn't had any problems with them.  I believe HFS will handle a very

large (< 16000?) number of files per folder without any problem.

The new Finder in System 7.0, along with use of the Desktop Manager,
should be able to deal with these kind of folders a lot better.

-- 
Andy Peterman                       |   Opinions expressed
treehouse!andyp@gvgpsa.gvg.tek.com  | are definitely those of
(916) 273-4569                      |      my employer!