Manipulate DJB's Constant Database files. These are 2 level disk-based hash tables that efficiently handle thousands of keys, while remaining space-efficient.
Constant databases have the desirable property of requiring low overhead to open.
What is it?
cdb is a fast, reliable, simple package for creating and reading constant databases. Its database structure provides several features:
- Fast lookups: A successful lookup in a large database normally takes just two disk accesses. An unsuccessful lookup takes only one.
- Low overhead: A database uses 2048 bytes, plus 24 bytes per record, plus the space for keys and data.
- No random limits: cdb can handle any database up to 4 gigabytes. There are no other restrictions; records don't even have to fit into memory. Databases are stored in a machine-independent format.
- Fast atomic database replacement: cdbmake can rewrite an entire database two orders of magnitude faster than other hashing packages.
- Fast database dumps: cdbdump prints the contents of a database in cdbmake-compatible format.
cdb is designed to be used in mission-critical applications like e-mail. Database replacement is safe against system crashes. Readers don't have to pause during a rewrite.
Originally based on dw/python-pure-cdb (Pure Python CDB Library).