[thelist] [CODE] bloated image src names

[Kelly Hallman]

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Chris W. Parker wrote:
> although i do see your point i have to ask this possibly tired question
> of you, why have folders at all? why not just use a special naming
> convention throughout the whole os and do away with folders all
> together? ... besides a few characters, what's the difference between
> src="images_home_rainbow.gif" and src="images/home/rainbow.gif". are
> they really anything more than two logical ways of representing the same
> thing?

Do you use a filing cabinet?  Do you put all your documents into a single
drawer and leaf through them everytime you want to find something or do
you organize them into file folders, to make things easier to find?  It's
for your convenience, not the computer's.

To a computer, finding the file site1_images_buttons_nav1_contact.gif may
be no more difficult than finding site1/images/buttons/nav1/contact.gif
(though an extreme number of files in a single directory might cause
problems or performance issues, depending on your filesystem/OS).

It doesn't seem so much a question of why use folders as a question of why
not use folders...what problem are you trying to remedy?  I don't see any
gain with the hypothesized single-directory approach.  In fact, it seems
like it creates more issues, especially the more complex a site grows.

All things being equal, I see the main disadvantage of trying to do things
this way being that you have no inherent navigational features.  You have
to remember your structure to find the file you want.  Permissions were
mentioned which I think is another good point.  Imagine trying to select
files with a wildcard when you have 10000 files in a directory, that could
be very dangerous, or at least error-prone... (how long would it take to
get a listing of such a directory over FTP?:)

-- Kelly Hallman
   http://wrack.org/