Last Modified: April 08, 1991
Article: TA44926
Old Article: 637

The Pascal III Filer reads the entire directory into memory before printing
any of it, and so the number of files in a directory is limited. With
a 128K Apple III, this limit is approximately 500 files; a ProFile with
a directory containing more than 500 files, then, can cause problems.

SOS was designed to accomodate subdirectories so that large numbers of files
can be stored and used with ease. A complex daily log of transactions, for
instance, might be arranged like this:

TRANSACTIONS.82
______________________|________________ ...
| |
JANUARY FEBURARY
______|________ ______|________
| | | | | | | |
D1 D2 D3 ... D31 D1 D2 D3 ... D28

This way, the pathname to the data for the last day of Feburary would be:

/PROFILE/TRANSCTIONS.82/FEBURARY/D28

By making use of SOS's ability to accomodate subdirectories, then, you can
store far more than 500 files, as long as you never exceed the 500-file limit
within any single directory.