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30 .\" @(#)recno.3 8.5 (Berkeley) 8/18/94
37 .Nd record number database access method
44 is the library interface to database files.
45 One of the supported file formats is record number files.
46 The general description of the database access methods is in
48 this manual page describes only the recno specific information.
50 The record number data structure is either variable or fixed-length
51 records stored in a flat-file format, accessed by the logical record
53 The existence of record number five implies the existence of records
54 one through four, and the deletion of record number one causes
55 record number five to be renumbered to record number four, as well
56 as the cursor, if positioned after record number one, to shift down
59 The recno access method specific data structure provided to
63 include file as follows:
76 The elements of this structure are defined as follows:
77 .Bl -tag -width cachesizex
79 The flag value is specified by or'ing any of the following values:
80 .Bl -tag -width R_FIXEDLENX -offset indent
82 The records are fixed-length, not byte delimited.
85 specifies the length of the record, and the structure element
87 is used as the pad character.
88 Any records, inserted into the database, that are less than
90 bytes long are automatically padded.
92 In the interface specified by
94 the sequential record retrieval fills in both the caller's key and
98 flag is specified, the cursor routines are not required to fill in the
100 This permits applications to retrieve records at the end of files
101 without reading all of the intervening records.
103 This flag requires that a snapshot of the file be taken when
105 is called, instead of permitting any unmodified records to be read
106 from the original file.
109 A suggested maximum size, in bytes, of the memory cache.
112 advisory, and the access method will allocate more memory rather than
116 is 0 (no size is specified) a default cache is used.
118 The recno access method stores the in-memory copies of its records
120 This value is the size (in bytes) of the pages used for nodes in that
124 is 0 (no page size is specified) a page size is chosen based on the
125 underlying file system I/O block size.
128 for more information.
130 The byte order for integers in the stored database metadata.
131 The number should represent the order as an integer; for example,
132 big endian order would be the number 4,321.
135 is 0 (no order is specified) the current host order is used.
137 The length of a fixed-length record.
139 The delimiting byte to be used to mark the end of a record for
140 variable-length records, and the pad character for fixed-length
142 If no value is specified, newlines
144 are used to mark the end of variable-length records and fixed-length
145 records are padded with spaces.
147 The recno access method stores the in-memory copies of its records
150 .No non- Ns Dv NULL ,
151 it specifies the name of the btree file, as if specified as the file
157 The data part of the key/data pair used by the recno access method
158 is the same as other access methods.
159 The key is different.
162 field of the key should be a pointer to a memory location of type
163 recno_t, as defined in the
166 This type is normally the largest unsigned integral type available to
170 field of the key should be the size of that type.
172 Because there can be no meta-data associated with the underlying
173 recno access method files, any changes made to the default values
174 (e.g., fixed record length or byte separator value) must be explicitly
175 specified each time the file is opened.
177 In the interface specified by
181 interface to create a new record will cause the creation of multiple,
182 empty records if the record number is more than one greater than the
183 largest record currently in the database.
187 access method routines may fail and set
189 for any of the errors specified for the library routine
194 An attempt was made to add a record to a fixed-length database that
195 was too large to fit.
204 .%T "Document Processing in a Relational Database System"
205 .%A Michael Stonebraker
210 .%J Memorandum No. UCB/ERL M82/32
214 Only big and little endian byte order is supported.