Maximum size of directories

On computers using ext[2-4], there is a hard limit to the total number of inodes that can be defined, hence the number of directories and/or files. That number is really high.

However, life becomes quite difficult when you have more than a few thousand files in a directory:

• Commands like ls * cannot expand to cover all objects: * will be expanded to cover all objects before executing the ls command, and that won't work anymore
• It just becomes plain difficult to work with content of such large directories.

Sources

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8238860/maximum-number-of-files-directories-on-linux