will the php readdir function work with 1 million files in a single directory?

Question

I am writing a script that needs to scan through a large amount of files (potentially up to 1 million) in a single directory (ext4). I am planning on using the PHP readdir function to create the list.

Since I don't have that amount of files in the directory yet, I don't know if it will work. I know 'ls' and such don't work on that amount of files, but I don't need them to.

So, the question is really only ...will PHP readdir work on 1 million files?

Can you just write a script that creates that number of files and test it? — WojtekT, May 26 '12 at 19:13

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 26 '12 at 19:12

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Why would you have so many files? It will kill your performance. Can't you group the data somehow? Or store it in a database? I can't really see how one million files in a sigle directory would make sense. The fragmentation would be enormous. Please give an example of the file you are storing.

answered May 26 '12 at 19:12

AlfredoVR

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They are images and the IDs of every single image will be stored in a mySQL database, which is there the application will later find every image to output, so that's not a problem. – user1227914 May 26 '12 at 19:14
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Store the images inside the database, that's your solution. – AlfredoVR May 26 '12 at 19:16
or hash the files and group by the first letter of the hash like mediawiki does – Cole Tobin May 26 '12 at 20:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 26 '12 at 19:45

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My answer to my own question, if anyone is wondering, is IT WORKS. I created a script to create 1 million random files and successfully ran the readdir function.

answered May 26 '12 at 19:45

user1227914

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will the php readdir function work with 1 million files in a single directory?

2 Answers2