README
1# $NetBSD: README,v 1.5 1999/02/16 17:59:18 kleink Exp $
2# @(#)README 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
3
4This package implements a superset of the hsearch and dbm/ndbm libraries.
5
6Test Programs:
7 All test programs which need key/data pairs expect them entered
8 with key and data on separate lines
9
10 tcreat3.c
11 Takes
12 bucketsize (bsize),
13 fill factor (ffactor), and
14 initial number of elements (nelem).
15 Creates a hash table named hashtest containing the
16 keys/data pairs entered from standard in.
17 thash4.c
18 Takes
19 bucketsize (bsize),
20 fill factor (ffactor),
21 initial number of elements (nelem)
22 bytes of cache (ncached), and
23 file from which to read data (fname)
24 Creates a table from the key/data pairs on standard in and
25 then does a read of each key/data in fname
26 tdel.c
27 Takes
28 bucketsize (bsize), and
29 fill factor (ffactor).
30 file from which to read data (fname)
31 Reads each key/data pair from fname and deletes the
32 key from the hash table hashtest
33 tseq.c
34 Reads the key/data pairs in the file hashtest and writes them
35 to standard out.
36 tread2.c
37 Takes
38 butes of cache (ncached).
39 Reads key/data pairs from standard in and looks them up
40 in the file hashtest.
41 tverify.c
42 Reads key/data pairs from standard in, looks them up
43 in the file hashtest, and verifies that the data is
44 correct.
45
46NOTES:
47
48The man page ../man/db.3 explains the interface to the hashing system.
49The file hash.ps is a postscript copy of a paper explaining
50the history, implementation, and performance of the hash package.
51
52"bugs" or idiosyncracies
53
54If you have a lot of overflows, it is possible to run out of overflow
55pages. Currently, this will cause a message to be printed on stderr.
56Eventually, this will be indicated by a return error code.
57
58If you are using the ndbm interface and exit without flushing or closing the
59file, you may lose updates since the package buffers all writes. Also,
60the db interface only creates a single database file. To avoid overwriting
61the user's original file, the suffix ".db" is appended to the file name
62passed to dbm_open. Additionally, if your code "knows" about the historic
63.dir and .pag files, it will break.
64
65There is a fundamental difference between this package and the old hsearch.
66Hsearch requires the user to maintain the keys and data in the application's
67allocated memory while hash takes care of all storage management. The down
68side is that the byte strings passed in the ENTRY structure must be null
69terminated (both the keys and the data).
70