Phoebe 2100: Filecore

Firstly, the limit on the number of files per directory has been removed.
Acorn have tested directories containing up to 80,000 objects, although it was noted that the filer tends to slow down around 3,000 objects!
The maximum length of filenames has been increased from 10 to 255 characters.
To make reading filer windows easier, an option is provided to truncate the displayed filenames to a specified number of characters. Labels truncated in this way will be marked with a final elipsis.

To cure a more recent problem, the Large File Allocation Unit (LFAU) has been reduced in size.
The problem exhibited itself as a maximum limit on the size of hard discs; at around 8Gbytes, any further increase in disc size resulted in less free space due to the increasing size of the LFAU.
The LFAU will still grow with disc size, but it is now 16 times smaller for a given size of disc. The point of diminishing returns is now reached at 128Gbytes!
A smaller LFAU also has the advantage of reducing the space taken up by small files.
The price to be paid for these improvements is that the size of the free space map is increased, using up main memory. With large directories and a small LFAU, the map could take around 700kbytes. Since both memory and hard drives are relatively cheap, it is up to the user to balance the two factors.