Indexed Hash Directories

Question

I was just browsing the minix file system when I was interested in learning about various file systems. When reading about the features supported by ext2, I saw that it hash indexed directoriesis one of them.

Can someone enlighten me on what it is?

Answer 1

For more information on indexing the Ext2 / 3 Htree directory, see below:

http://ext2.sourceforge.net/2005-ols/paper-html/node3.html

Basically, the file system uses a hash tree to store directory entries, not a linear list. This leads to a significant increase in performance in directory search operations.