recno
RECNO(3) RECNO(3)
NAME
recno - record number database access method
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <db.h>
DESCRIPTION
The routine dbopen 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 man-
ual 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 follows:
typedef struct {
u_long flags;
u_int cachesize;
u_int psize;
int lorder;
size_t reclen;
u_char bval;
char *bfname;
} RECNOINFO;
The elements of this structure are defined as follows:
flags The flag value is specified by or’ing any of the following val-
ues:
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 cur-
sor routines are not required to fill in the key struc-
ture. 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 unmodi-
fied 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
file system 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 exam-
ple, 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 meta-data 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 speci-
fied each time the file is opened.
In the interface specified by dbopen, using the put interface to cre-
ate 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.
SEE ALSO
btree(3) dbopen(3), hash(3), mpool(3),
Document Processing in a Relational Database System, Michael Stone-
braker, Heidi Stettner, Joseph Kalash, Antonin Guttman, Nadene Lynn,
Memorandum No. UCB/ERL M82/32, May 1982.
BUGS
Only big and little endian byte order is supported.
4.4 Berkeley Distribution 1994-08-18 RECNO(3)
