Q: Mailbox format

[Henry Spencer]

On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, Taavi Burns wrote:
> > ...Tracking the order constraints
> > is more complicated than writing things out immediately, but it's not
> > prohibitive, and performance is vastly better with no change in on-disk
> > data format whatsoever.  "Work smarter, not harder."
> 
> I totally agree.  But I ask if it may not be more worthwhile to work
> smarter AND less at the same time, by not having to do monstrous data
> conversions.

If monstrous data conversions are required, then it may be worth doing
some rethinking.  However, simply being a little more intelligent seldom
requires monstrous data conversions.  People tend to grossly overestimate
the difficulty of remaining compatible -- to assume that major
improvements *must* involve starting over. 

> > > ...they store directories as flat files.  Really, that's silly...
> > Rather, it's a tradeoff that doesn't scale up well...
> 
> A tradeoff in what form?

Between large-directory performance and the combination of implementation
simplicity, small-directory performance, and space consumption.  (Fancy
data structures optimized for large directories can easily increase the
space and time overhead for small ones... and most directories are small,
and most directory accesses are to small ones.)

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org

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