Python in a Nutshell

The Berkeley DB Module

Python comes with the bsddb module, which wraps the Berkeley Database library (also known as BSD DB) if that library is installed on your system and your Python installation is built to support it. With the BSD DB library, you can create hash, binary tree, or record-based files that generally behave like dictionaries. On Windows, Python includes a port of the BSD DB library, thus ensuring that module bsddb is always usable. To download BSD DB sources, binaries for other platforms, and detailed documentation on BSD DB, see http://www.sleepycat.com. Module bsddb supplies three factory functions, btopen, hashopen, and rnopen.

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Examples of Berkeley DB Use

The Berkeley DB is suited to tasks similar to those for which DBM-like files are appropriate. Indeed, anydbm uses dbhash, the DBM-like interface to the Berkeley DB, to create new DBM-like files. In addition, the Berkeley DB can also use other file formats when you use module bsddb explicitly. The binary tree format, while not quite as fast as the hashed format when all you need is keyed access, is excellent when you also need to access keys in alphabetical order.

The following example handles the same task as the DBM example shown earlier, but uses bsddb rather than anydbm:

import fileinput, os, bsddb wordPos = { } sep = os.pathsep for line in fileinput.input( ...