Ubuntu Manpage: recno - record number database access method

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NAME

       recno - record number database access method

SYNOPSIS

       #include <sys/types.h>
       #include <db.h>

DESCRIPTION

Note well: This page documents interfaces provided in glibc up until version 2.1. Since
version 2.2, glibc no longer provides these interfaces. Probably, you are looking for the
APIs provided by the libdb library instead.

The routine dbopen(3) is the library interface to database files. One of the supported
file formats is record number files. The general description of the database access
methods is in dbopen(3), this manual page describes only the recno specific information.

The record number data structure is either variable or fixed-length records stored in a
flat-file format, accessed by the logical record number. The existence of record number
five implies the existence of records one through four, and the deletion of record number
one causes record number five to be renumbered to record number four, as well as the
cursor, if positioned after record number one, to shift down one record.

The recno access method specific data structure provided to dbopen(3) is defined in the
<db.h> include file as follows:

typedef struct {
unsigned long flags;
unsigned int cachesize;
unsigned int psize;
int lorder;
size_t reclen;
unsigned char bval;
char *bfname;
} RECNOINFO;

The elements of this structure are defined as follows:

flags The flag value is specified by ORing any of the following values:

R_FIXEDLEN
The records are fixed-length, not byte delimited. The structure element
reclen specifies the length of the record, and the structure element bval is
used as the pad character. Any records, inserted into the database, that
are less than reclen bytes long are automatically padded.

R_NOKEY
In the interface specified by dbopen(3), the sequential record retrieval
fills in both the caller's key and data structures. If the R_NOKEY flag is
specified, the cursor routines are not required to fill in the key
structure. This permits applications to retrieve records at the end of
files without reading all of the intervening records.

R_SNAPSHOT
This flag requires that a snapshot of the file be taken when dbopen(3) is
called, instead of permitting any unmodified records to be read from the
original file.

cachesize
A suggested maximum size, in bytes, of the memory cache. This value is only
advisory, and the access method will allocate more memory rather than fail. If
cachesize is 0 (no size is specified) a default cache is used.

psize The recno access method stores the in-memory copies of its records in a btree.
This value is the size (in bytes) of the pages used for nodes in that tree. If
psize is 0 (no page size is specified) a page size is chosen based on the
underlying filesystem I/O block size. See btree(3) for more information.

lorder The byte order for integers in the stored database metadata. The number should
represent the order as an integer; for example, big endian order would be the
number 4,321. If lorder is 0 (no order is specified) the current host order is
used.

reclen The length of a fixed-length record.

bval The delimiting byte to be used to mark the end of a record for variable-length
records, and the pad character for fixed-length records. If no value is specified,
newlines ("\n") are used to mark the end of variable-length records and fixed-
length records are padded with spaces.

bfname The recno access method stores the in-memory copies of its records in a btree. If
bfname is non-NULL, it specifies the name of the btree file, as if specified as the
filename for a dbopen(3) of a btree file.

The data part of the key/data pair used by the recno access method is the same as other
access methods. The key is different. The data field of the key should be a pointer to a
memory location of type recno_t, as defined in th <db.h> include file. This type is
normally the largest unsigned integral type available to the implementation. The size
field of the key should be the size of that type.

Because there can be no metadata associated with the underlying recno access method files,
any changes made to the default values (e.g., fixed record length or byte separator value)
must be explicitly specified each time the file is opened.

In the interface specified by dbopen(3), using the put interface to create a new record
will cause the creation of multiple, empty records if the record number is more than one
greater than the largest record currently in the database.

ERRORS

       The recno access method routines may fail and set errno for any of  the  errors  specified
       for the library routine dbopen(3) or the following:

       EINVAL An  attempt  was made to add a record to a fixed-length database that was too large
              to fit.

BUGS

       Only big and little endian byte order is supported.

COLOPHON