> I remember this same thing in every unix system I've ever written
> software on. There may be 'standard' unix filesystems out there that
> don't partake of this behaviour...I just never recall seeing one.
>
> Jakob Borg wrote:
> >
> > If a directory is created and filled with, say, 500 files, it will
> > grow to 6K in size. It will retain this size when all files in it are
> > unlinked.
> >
> > Does it ever shrink in size or will it retain it's 6 blocks until
> > it's unlinked? If so, is this just another form of preallocation, in
> > case we would that many files again in the same directory?
I don't know much about the implementation of the ext2 fs, but on most
unixes a directorie is just a file which is accesed useing diffrent kernel
functions (on some unixes - e.g. HP-UX - you can do a read() on a dir).
A general behaviour with UNIX files is that a file can never shrink! A
file can be trucated - but it can shrink e.g. from 10 bytes to 5. Since
a directory is just a file it can't shrink too (except the implementation
contains additional code for it).
But what you can do if you have a large directory with only a few files
(let's call the dir 'foobar') is:
" mkdir temp ; mv foobar/* temp/ ; rmdir foobar ; mv temp foobar "
happy hacking,
clifford
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Clifford Wolf
magnet - Internet at Work IRC: efnet / clifford
Director of System Development http://www.clifford.at/
e-mail: c.wolf@magnet.at email: god@clifford.at
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