Re: multiply files in one (was GNU/Linux stance by Richard Stallman)

Larry McVoy (lm@bitmover.com)
Mon, 29 Mar 1999 13:23:37 -0800

: > Please show me the design of a file system which can bring in multiple
: > small files with a single seek and read. When you get done, you'll be
: > looking at what I described.
:
: Seek and read which files? If you want anything but all files, you're
: probably out of lock. Again, you will have to seek if any of the
: files are fragmented (which is the case with most fs).

Your still missing the performance implications. In many, many typical
cases (and this will become more and more true as memory gets cheaper),
it would be far faster to eat the whole tarball and explode it into a
bunch of in memory files even to get just a few of the files. Work
through the math - if each file costs you a seek, you only need to get
to 2-3 files before it would be faster to get 'em all.

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