Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!shelby!apple!sun-barr!texsun!texbell!vector!chip
From: chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US (Chip Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: gnu.utils.bug
Subject: big problems with gdbm 0.8
Message-ID: <710@vector.Dallas.TX.US>
Date: 27 Aug 89 04:12:07 GMT
Reply-To: chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US (Chip Rosenthal)
Distribution: gnu
Organization: Dallas Semiconductor
Lines: 25

I have ported gdbm version 0.8 to System V (actually XENIX).  I have found
several problems with it.

First, gdbm will only work on a machine where:

    sizeof(long) == sizeof(int) == sizeof(char *)

To see how big the problem was, I ran lint on it.  I got *five* pages of
output.

Second, there are a couple of small bugs in it.  The worst is line 195
in gdbmopen() where the for loop scribbles beyond dbf->dir[] and dumps
core.

Third, I am getting really bad performance results.  I took a small utility
which uses the system dbm and recompiled it with gdbm.  With the XENIX dbm,
it took me 5 seconds to build the database.  GNU dbm takes about 90 seconds.
And this is a very small database with only about 300 entires.

This last problem is a real killer for me.  Has anybody compared gdbm
against their native dbm?  Are the results consistent with what I'm
seeing?
-- 
Chip Rosenthal / chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US / Dallas Semiconductor / 214-450-5337
"I wish you'd put that starvation box down and go to bed" - Albert Collins' Mom