*BSD News Article 49545


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From: Michael Hancock <michaelh@cet.co.jp>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Re: dbm or equivalent in BSDi ?
Date: 22 Aug 1995 15:19:16 GMT
Organization: CATENA Enterprise Technologies
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <41cshk$aur@diablo.cet.co.jp>
References: <richard-2108951808480001@island.interverse.com> <VIXIE.95Aug21183457@wisdom.home.vix.com>
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I recently compiled Perl5.001m on BSD/OS 2.0.1.  Just use gcc.  Perl 
compiled with the default cc, which is gcc1, will core dump in the NDBM 
tests.

/Configure -Dcc=gcc

I heard on bsdi-users that GDBM handles multiple access better, you can 
download it from mit's ftp server.  This builds real easy on BSD/OS.

vixie@wisdom.home.vix.com (Paul A Vixie) wrote:
>>Many unix systems have a very simple database feature called DBM or NDBM. 
>>Our BSDi 2.0 out of the box does not seem to have this feature and my
>>4.4BSD manual for O'Reilly mentions nothing by those names leading me to
>>wonder if it even exists for BSD.  Perl has hooks that make it easy to use
>>DBM (which has come in very handy when I was working around UNIX(r) System
>>V Release 4 and IRIX Release 5.2).
>>
>>Does anyone know if there is an equivelent program for BSDi?
>
>Well.  Um, yes.  Short answer: "man dbopen" will get you started; there is
>an ndbm stub library built into the C Library of BSD/OS 2.0.  You can probably
>just tell Perl to use dbopen directly, otherwise tell it to use ndbm and all
>will be well.
>
>But I find your wryly amusing, due to the history behind it.  Bell Labs put
>something called "dbm" into V7 UNIX.  USL took it out in System III.  Berkeley
>upgraded "dbm" into "ndbm" in BSD 4.3 (based on 32V which was based on V7.)
>USL, feeling market pressure since System V didn't have "vi" or "csh" or any of
>the things that made BSD usable, added a bunch of BSDisms in System V.3 and
>then a bunch more (including Sendmail et al) in System V.4.  So now you tell me
>that ndbm, which came from V7 but was abandoned by USL during the years BSD
>was building its popularity, has been reinserted into SVR4.  I'll bet this
>is not covered in Peter Salus's UNIX history book, which is too bad since it's
>definitely an example of truth being stranger than fiction.
>
>(BSD abandoned dbm and ndbm since they were encumbered with Bell Labs 32V code;
>Margo Seltzer and Keith Bostic came up with "dbopen" which has a mode where it
>can emulate dbm or ndbm; perhaps some day System V.5 will pick up "dbopen" and
>help complete the loop.)
>-- 
>Paul Vixie
>La Honda, CA			"Illegitimi non carborundum."
><paul@vix.com>
>pacbell!vixie!paul		(dont let the bastards grind you down)