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