Opening the database.

Initialize gdbm system. If the file has a size of zero bytes, a file initialization procedure is performed, setting up the initial structure in the file.

The procedure for opening a gdbm file is:

GDBM_FILE dbf;

dbf = gdbm_open(name, block_size, flags, mode, fatal_func);

The parameters are:

char *name

The name of the file (the complete name, gdbm does not append any characters to this name).

int block_size

It is used during initialization to determine the size of various constructs. It is the size of a single transfer from disk to memory. This parameter is ignored if the file has been previously initialized. The minimum size is 512. If the value is less than 512, the file system blocksize is used, otherwise the value of block_size is used.

int flags

If flags is set to GDBM_READER, the user wants to just read the database and any call to gdbm_store or gdbm_delete will fail. Many readers can access the database at the same time. If flags is set to GDBM_WRITER, the user wants both read and write access to the database and requires exclusive access. If flags is set to GDBM_WRCREAT, the user wants both read and write access to the database and if the database does not exist, create a new one. If flags is set to GDBM_NEWDB, the user want a new database created, regardless of whether one existed, and wants read and write access to the new database. For all writers (GDBM_WRITER, GDBM_WRCREAT and GDBM_NEWDB) the value GDBM_FAST can be added to the flags field using logical or. This option causes gdbm to write the database without any disk file synchronization. This allows faster writes, but may produce an inconsistent database in the event of abnormal termination of the writer. Any error detected will cause a return value of NULL and an appropriate value will be in gdbm_errno (see Variables). If no errors occur, a pointer to the gdbm file descriptor will be returned.

int mode

File mode (see chmod(2) and open(2) if the file is created).

void (*fatal_func) ()

A function for gdbm to call if it detects a fatal error. The only parameter of this function is a string. If the value of NULL is provided, gdbm will use a default function.

The return value, dbf, is the pointer needed by all other functions to access that gdbm file. If the return is the NULL pointer, gdbm_open was not successful. The errors can be found in gdbm_errno for gdbm errors and in errno for file system errors (for error codes, see gdbm.h).

In all of the following calls, the parameter dbf refers to the pointer returned from gdbm_open.

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