Re: the *db* crap

[Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org>]

Marc Slemko wrote:
> On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, Greg Stein wrote:
> > I think there was an issue with NDBM, but I can reexamine. The 0.9.7
> > release will include SDBM (a public domain DBM). SDBM is also shipped by
> > Perl, so it should be capable enough. SDBM will become the default
> > linkage -- GDBM cannot be the default because it is GPL (not even
> > LGPL!).
> 
> I haven't looked at it, but if SDBM is reasonable in size and code and
> license, I would be very tempted to have us use it as default for
> everything and tell people "if you want to use another *db* library, go
> ahead.  If you can't make it work right, please just use the default."

1346 lines, 10k for libsdbm.a, and it is public domain.

It is an NDBM API-compatible library, based on the man page description.
It produces a .pag and a .dir file for each database. (note: the
databases are not binary compatible -- just the API for manipulating
them)

I'm going to be including it with the next mod_dav release. I've
tightened up the distribution, renamed the files to be sdbm*, integrated
locking code from mod_rewrite (can we get those lock/unlock functions in
the Apache core?), included a bug fix or two from the Perl distro of
SDBM, some portability simplification/cleanup, and a couple tweaks to
its manual loop unrolling.

I'd be happy to tar up the directory if somebody else would like to
experiment with it.

Cheers,
-g

--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/