[Q] Is this true and does it mean there is dynamic defragmentation in ext2/3?

[Maurice Volaski]

Someone recently posted the following statement midway down the page 
at 
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-305871-postdays-0-postorder-asc-highlight-ext3+ordered+data-start-25.html

>You don't need to defragment ext2/ext3 because as you use the 
>filesystem file blocks and inodes are moved around and reallocated 
>to keep the data nearly contiguous. It's not perfect, but it works 
>fairly well and you should almost never see a performance 
>degradation caused by the filesystem's fragmentation.

Is this statement accurate and does it mean ext2/3 is performing a 
sort of dynamic defragmentation?
-- 

Maurice Volaski, mvolaski at aecom.yu.edu
Computing Support, Rose F. Kennedy Center
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University