xref: /freebsd/lib/libc/db/hash/README (revision f81cdf24ba5436367377f7c8e8f51f6df2a75ca7)
1
2This package implements a superset of the hsearch and dbm/ndbm libraries.
3
4Test Programs:
5	All test programs which need key/data pairs expect them entered
6	with key and data on separate lines
7
8	tcreat3.c
9		Takes
10			bucketsize (bsize),
11			fill factor (ffactor), and
12			initial number of elements (nelem).
13		Creates a hash table named hashtest containing the
14		keys/data pairs entered from standard in.
15	thash4.c
16		Takes
17			bucketsize (bsize),
18			fill factor (ffactor),
19			initial number of elements (nelem)
20			bytes of cache (ncached), and
21			file from which to read data  (fname)
22		Creates a table from the key/data pairs on standard in and
23		then does a read of each key/data in fname
24	tdel.c
25		Takes
26			bucketsize (bsize), and
27			fill factor (ffactor).
28			file from which to read data (fname)
29		Reads each key/data pair from fname and deletes the
30		key from the hash table hashtest
31	tseq.c
32		Reads the key/data pairs in the file hashtest and writes them
33		to standard out.
34	tread2.c
35		Takes
36			butes of cache (ncached).
37		Reads key/data pairs from standard in and looks them up
38		in the file hashtest.
39	tverify.c
40		Reads key/data pairs from standard in, looks them up
41		in the file hashtest, and verifies that the data is
42		correct.
43
44NOTES:
45
46The man page ../man/db.3 explains the interface to the hashing system.
47The file hash.ps is a postscript copy of a paper explaining
48the history, implementation, and performance of the hash package.
49
50"bugs" or idiosyncracies
51
52If you have a lot of overflows, it is possible to run out of overflow
53pages.  Currently, this will cause a message to be printed on stderr.
54Eventually, this will be indicated by a return error code.
55
56If you are using the ndbm interface and exit without flushing or closing the
57file, you may lose updates since the package buffers all writes.  Also,
58the db interface only creates a single database file.  To avoid overwriting
59the user's original file, the suffix ".db" is appended to the file name
60passed to dbm_open.  Additionally, if your code "knows" about the historic
61.dir and .pag files, it will break.
62
63There is a fundamental difference between this package and the old hsearch.
64Hsearch requires the user to maintain the keys and data in the application's
65allocated memory while hash takes care of all storage management.  The down
66side is that the byte strings passed in the ENTRY structure must be null
67terminated (both the keys and the data).
68