[wplug] number of characters in the path of a file

[Keir Josephson]

Is anyone aware of a degradation in performance when you use longer file
paths? For example, is there a difference in performance when accessing a
file in this location:

/test/filename.dat

as opposed to this location:

/test/very/long/filepath/to/filename.dat

I believe that in some versions of HP-UX, if the total number of
characters in the filename and filepath exceed 36, then any requests for
that file go straight to disk. I'm assuming that means that it bypasses
the buffer cache. I'm almost positive that this limitation does not exist
in recent versions of Solaris (or at least the limit is much higher).

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any info either way regarding
Linux. Does anyone know if Linux has a limitation like this?

-Keir