package AnyDBM_File; use warnings; use strict; use 5.006_001; our $VERSION = '1.01'; our @ISA = qw(NDBM_File DB_File GDBM_File SDBM_File ODBM_File) unless @ISA; my $mod; for $mod (@ISA) { if (eval "require $mod") { @ISA = ($mod); # if we leave @ISA alone, warnings abound return 1; } } die "No DBM package was successfully found or installed"; __END__ =head1 NAME AnyDBM_File - provide framework for multiple DBMs NDBM_File, DB_File, GDBM_File, SDBM_File, ODBM_File - various DBM implementations =head1 SYNOPSIS use AnyDBM_File; =head1 DESCRIPTION This module is a "pure virtual base class"--it has nothing of its own. It's just there to inherit from one of the various DBM packages. It prefers ndbm for compatibility reasons with Perl 4, then Berkeley DB (See L), GDBM, SDBM (which is always there--it comes with Perl), and finally ODBM. This way old programs that used to use NDBM via dbmopen() can still do so, but new ones can reorder @ISA: BEGIN { @AnyDBM_File::ISA = qw(DB_File GDBM_File NDBM_File) } use AnyDBM_File; Having multiple DBM implementations makes it trivial to copy database formats: use Fcntl; use NDBM_File; use DB_File; tie %newhash, 'DB_File', $new_filename, O_CREAT|O_RDWR; tie %oldhash, 'NDBM_File', $old_filename, 1, 0; %newhash = %oldhash; =head2 DBM Comparisons Here's a partial table of features the different packages offer: odbm ndbm sdbm gdbm bsd-db ---- ---- ---- ---- ------ Linkage comes w/ perl yes yes yes yes yes Src comes w/ perl no no yes no no Comes w/ many unix os yes yes[0] no no no Builds ok on !unix ? ? yes yes ? Code Size ? ? small big big Database Size ? ? small big? ok[1] Speed ? ? slow ok fast FTPable no no yes yes yes Easy to build N/A N/A yes yes ok[2] Size limits 1k 4k 1k[3] none none Byte-order independent no no no no yes Licensing restrictions ? ? no yes no =over 4 =item [0] on mixed universe machines, may be in the bsd compat library, which is often shunned. =item [1] Can be trimmed if you compile for one access method. =item [2] See L. Requires symbolic links. =item [3] By default, but can be redefined. =back =head1 SEE ALSO dbm(3), ndbm(3), DB_File(3), L =cut