| Guido van Rossum | 571391b | 1997-04-03 22:41:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | \section{Standard Module \sectcode{anydbm}} |
| 2 | \stmodindex{anydbm} |
| 3 | \stmodindex{dumbdbm} |
| 4 | |
| 5 | \code{anydbm} is a generic interface to variants of the DBM |
| 6 | database--DBM, GDBM, or dbhash. If none of these modules is |
| 7 | installed, the slow-but-simple implementation in \file{dumbdbm.py} |
| 8 | will be used. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | \begin{funcdesc}{open}{filename\optional{\, flag\, mode}} |
| 11 | Open the database file \var{filename} and return a corresponding object. |
| 12 | The optional \var{flag} argument can be |
| 13 | \code{'r'} to open an existing database for reading only, |
| 14 | \code{'w'} to open an existing database for reading and writing, |
| 15 | \code{'c'} to create the database if it doesn't exist, or |
| 16 | \code{'n'}, which will always create a new empty database. If not |
| 17 | specified, the default value is \code{'r'}. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | The optional \var{mode} argument is the \UNIX{} mode of the file, used |
| 20 | only when the database has to be created. It defaults to octal |
| 21 | \code{0666}. |
| 22 | \end{funcdesc} |
| 23 | |
| 24 | THe object returned by \code{open()} supports most of the same |
| 25 | functionality as dictionaries; keys and their corresponding values can |
| 26 | be stored, retrieved, and deleted, and the \code{has_key()} and |
| 27 | \code{keys()} methods are available. Keys and values must always be strings. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | |