File space allocation/deallocation under Unix (BSD4.x)

[Ge' Weijers]

>From article <292 at anumb.UUCP>, by eao at anumb.UUCP (e.a.olson):
>     I believe that directory blocks are never reclaimed until
>     the directory is deleted.  If you have many files in a directory,
>     (i.e. more entries than can fit into a directory block), one
>     entry in the first block points to another disk block for
>     more name-inode entries.  Even if you later clean up that directory
>     so that there are only enough entries to fit into one disk block,
>     the indirect block is retained.

This was true for BSD 4.2 at least. I just looked at the directory
/usr/spool/news/.rnews on our BSD 4.3 system, and it was only 512 bytes
long, so there must be some space reclaiming going on (after a news problem
1500 articles were queued last week)
-- 
Ge' Weijers, Informatics dept., Nijmegen University, the Netherlands
UUCP: {uunet!,}mcvax!kunivv1!hobbit!ge