Q: Mailbox format

[Anton Markov]

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Well, I am don't know much about the actual formats, but the argument
that having many small files is a performance penalty can easily be
eliminated by using a specially-designed file system like reiserfs which
can handle small files well. I think this argument is probably out-dated
by now.

S P Arif Sahari Wibowo wrote:
> There's a general reason why file/message formats are a bad idea. Just
> about every filesystem in existance serializes file creation and deletions
> because these manipulate the free space map.  This turns out to be an
> enormous problem when you start creating/deleting more than a few messages
> per second; you spend all your time thrashing in the filesystem.
>  
> It is also extremely slow to do a text search through a file/message
> format mailbox.  All of those open()s and close()s really add up to major
> filesystem thrashing.
>  ...

- -- 
Anton Markov <("anton" + "@" + "truxtar" + "." + "com")>

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