db_recno

recno information for dbopen() 

Miscellaneous Information


SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/types.h>

#include <db.h>

typedef struct {
	u_long flags; 
	u_int cachesize;
	u_int psize;
	int lorder;
	size_t reclen;
	u_char bval;
	char *bfname;
} RECNOINFO;


DESCRIPTION

The dbopen() function 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(). This reference 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() is defined in the <db.h> include file as shown in the SYNOPSIS section. The elements of this structure are defined as follows:

flags  

The flag value is specified by or'ing 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(), 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() 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 allocates 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 file system I/O block size. See db_btree 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 file name for a dbopen() 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 the <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 (for example, fixed record length or byte separator value) must be explicitly specified each time the file is opened.

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


CONFORMANCE

4.4BSD.


AVAILABILITY

PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers 64-Bit Edition
PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers
PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-Bit Edition


SEE ALSO

Miscellaneous:
db_btree, db_hash


PTC MKS Toolkit 10.4 Documentation Build 39.