Question

I have ~280,000 files that will need to be searched through, and the proper file returned and opened. The file names are exact matches of the expected search terms.

The search terms will be taken by an input box using PHP. What is the best way to accomplish this so that searches do not take a large amount of time?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I suspect the file system itself will struggle with 280,000 files in one directory.

An approach I’ve taken in the past is to put those files in subdirectories based upon the initial letters of the filename e.g.

1/100000.txt
1/100001.txt
...
9/900000.txt

etc. You can subdivide further using the second letter etc.