[CentOS] lots of small files in a folder on Linux centos

Sun Jul 24 20:33:08 UTC 2011
R P Herrold <herrold at owlriver.com>

On Sun, 24 Jul 2011, Always Learning wrote:

> If the pictures are named sequentially, why not store then at a 100 per
> directory structure something like this
>
> /pix/0/00/pix00001.jpg
>
> /pix/0/26/pix02614.jpg
>
> /pix/6/72/pix67255.jpg

Go read Knuth

One does not do that because then one is counting on the end 
user's data to conform to, and to continue to conform to your 
expectations [here you have added an invisible constraint of 
'pix' as the first part of the file name which you are 
hoping remains constant -- it will not, as survey of naming 
schemes used by digital camera makers will reveal].  Your 
explicit constraint of a monotonicly increasing image number 
is also not likely to be realized in a world where people will 
erase or for other reasons not submit all of a given photo 
shoot

By using a hash, we remove those constraints, and also gain 
the virtuous effect for free of self-organizing a relatively 
level dispersion of files to the destination directories

-- Russ herrold