The "high water mark aspect" of directory name storage has caught me out before (ext4 filesystem): vince$ mkdir dir vince$ ls -ld dir drwxrwxr-x 2 vince vince

The "high water mark aspect" of directory name storage has caught me out before (ext4 filesystem): vince$ mkdir dir vince$ ls -ld dir drwxrwxr-x 2 vince vince 4096 Jul 15 15:27 dir vince$ let i=0 ; while [ $i -lt 1000000 ]; do let i=i+1; touch dir/$i; done vince$ ls -ld dir drwxrwxr-x 2 vince vince 22413312 Jul 15 15:47 dir vince$ rm dir/* vince$ ls -ld dir drwxrwxr-x 2 vince vince 22413312 Jul 15 15:47 dir