Why a flat file?

 Marten Terpstra <Marten.Terpstra at ripe.net> writes:
  * 
  * Laurent Joncheray <lpj at merit.edu> writes
  *  * 	Question for the RIPE programmers:
  *  * Why do you use 2 files (a dbm file for the refenreces, and a flat file
  *  * for the data), instead of just one dbm file with all the data?
  * 
  * It is easier to handle, much easier to make ftp-able versions, and a
  * lot smaller. Besides you can grep through a flat file, not through a
  * dbm file. The dbm file only contains offsets in the flat file.
  * Generally easier without losing much speed in lookups.
  * 
  * -Marten
Apart the usability by other people/programs (agrep covers a lot of 
sins/scripts) the size of the dbm file
is likely to be enourmous as well. Of course you can easily walk the
whole dbm file and produce a readable version but the offset idea
seems quick enough anyway so why bother ? 


		--Tony



-------- Logged at  Wed Apr 6 18:30:33 MET DST 1994  ---------