Steven Solie just posted an update to the
Hyperion developer blog letting us know about a
new wiki article on FFS, DCFS, and LNFS. It's a good read....
The AmigaOS Fast File System (FFS) was created back in 1988 and, believe it or not, is still in use today by some die hard enthusiasts who insist it is still pretty good. FFS has several modes which has enabled it to survive far past its expiry date. Two of those modes have never been described before. That is about to change.
Back in 1992, Randell Jesup added what is known as the Directory Caching File System (DCFS) mode to FFS. This was meant to speed up directory listings on floppy disks. A rarely used and mysterious mode with very little documentation.
Fast forward to 2001 when Olaf Barthel created a FFS reimplementation and added the Long Name File System (LNFS) mode. Up until this point users were stuck with 30 characters due to the original implementation.
Curious? Read all the gory details on the most complete and official AmigaOS Documentation Wiki.
There's some terrific docs on FFS from Olaf included with the AOS4 default install in the Documentation drawer, but additional details like this are always fun to read through.
-- eliyahu
