Large objects - bug? caveat? feature?

I am using PHP3 with Apache on top of Linux, using beta 2 of PostgreSQL. I
have uncovered an interesting (bug/feature?) in the Large Objects.

If (using PHP3) you write out, say, a 2,000 byte large object (a text
article in this case), and then using an edit routine you replace that 2,000
object with a more concise, edited 1,000-byte document, what you get is the
1,000-bytes of the edit, followed by the final 1,000 bytes of the original
2,000 byte article. In other words, it doesn't shrink the file to the edited
size.

Secondly, I notice that in my data/base/... area that whenever I create an
object it creates a single file on the disk. Does that mean that if I have
100,000 articles in my knowledge base, that it is possible that I will have
100,000 files individual 8-to-10k files on my hard drive? Does Linux suffer
degradation in performance when having that many files in a directory?

Justin


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