jschober@gnh-starport.UUCP (Joey Schober) (05/04/89)
Just a few words on the topic... :)
In my BBS software, as well as ProLine (and probably other programs; I don't
know of any off-hand, though), each message in the bulletin boards is stored as
a separate text file in the directory -- MSG2814, MSG2815, etc. Some of my
boards have 500 or more messages; the subdirectories therefore have that many
files. I've been using this setup for around 2 years, now. I have NOT noticed
any FUNCTIONAL problems with this. No unknown bug or limitation in ProDOS,
nothing like that. Access time DOES slow down -- as someone (forgot who,
sorry) said, about 3-4 seconds to access the bottommost file in a directory,
off a hard disk. HOWEVER, I've since installed CACHE/XL (that comes with
ProSEL, which is one of the greatest packages on any computer... :) -- it
gobbles up about 300 blocks of my /RAM5 volume, and then proceeds to speed disk
I/O up unbelievably, STARTING with directory searches. That takes care of that
problem........ :)
The only other difficulty is that most programs don't have large enough buffers
to handle the catalog, etc. for such directories. Uhhhh.... yeah, that's a
problem. For MY setup, it's not really necessary (the BBS software handles all
file access with BASIC.SYSTEM and MLI calls); if you're going to be using
ShrinkIt, AppleWorks, or even SHRConvert, etc. on the directory <_SFGetFile
even chokes on large directories... but THAT seems to be related to the
NEXT-DISK function, for some reason... or, more accurate, any change of prefix.
Don't ask me why...>, it's better to split the directory up.
Hope that helps!
Joseph F. Schober, Sysop, StarPort BBS [703/931-0947 - 3/12/2400 baud]
ProLine.: jschober@gnh-starport ===================
UUCP....: crash!pnet01!gnh-starport!jschober AppleLink: JSchober
InterNet: gnh-starport!jschober@pnet01.cts.com C-Serve: 72727,2765
ARPA....: crash!pnet01!gnh-starport!jschober@nosc.mil ===================
* Sent by StarPort BBS at 5/ 2/89 3:50:38 PM