[CrackMonkey] [mailman-owner@zork.net: CrackMonkey Subscribe Notification]

Aaron Lehmann aaronl at vitelus.com
Mon Jul 31 19:54:51 PDT 2000


On Mon, Jul 31, 2000 at 07:34:18PM -0700, Monkey Master wrote:
> begin  Aaron Lehmann quotation:
> > As I understand it, in EFM the database holds individal settings for
> > every directory you have done anything to. This is a lot of stuff
> > for someone who uses EFM a lot. EFM' developers have decided to read
> > it off the disk when necessary, rather than keep all the data for
> > all directories in memory. I believe Nick agrees with this
> > philosophy, since it is the main thing he blasts Emacs for. Berkeley
> > DB makes it easier to read things off the disk incrementally, since
> > with a text file it would have to be parsed each time.
> 
> 	Er, no.  I lambast EMACS for reading an entire file into RAM
> and letting the VM system page it out as it goes.  there's this great
> system call called "seek()" that you can use to  move around in a file
> without having to load it into a big-ass array.

Exactly my point. Berkeley DB makes it easy to seek() and load data
when you need it. Not loading a text configuration file into core
while running would probably cause parsing nightmares, as well as a
loss of speed due to parsing.

Again, this is all AFAIK.

> 	As for storing configuration data, how can there POSSIBLY be
> enough to warrant a db?

(Reading database ... 44272 files and directories currently
installed.)

A scalable design for a file manager is good when you have >
sizeof(short) files to manage.

BTW, I was wrong about the central database. It puts one in the .icons
subfolder of each directory it visits :(. But they are pretty large:

-rw-r--r--    1 aaronl   aaronl     147456 Jun 12 00:59 .0.db

for a dir with 274 items

> -- 
> CrackMonkey.Org - Non-sequitur arguments and ad-hominem personal attacks
> LinuxCabal.Org  - Co-location facilities and meeting space 
> Pigdog.Org      - The Online Handbook for Bad People of the Future
>                 You are not entitled to your opinions.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CrackMonkey: Non-sequitur arguments and ad-hominem personal attacks
> http://crackmonkey.org/mailman/listinfo/crackmonkey





More information about the Crackmonkey mailing list