Database in a simple ascii file

[Peter Hansen]

Rafael Mentz Aquino wrote:
> 
> How many lines can I have in a simple ascii file before
> I start to loose performance when I open this file and
> put all the lines in a dict, turning the first column into the key
> and the rest of the line into a list associated to that key.
> 
> (my file has just 100 lines, but that question starts to bother me ;-)

You will start to lose performance, relatively to no lines,
with even one line.  If you start with ten lines, you will
begin losing performance after you switch to a file of 11 
lines...

Why focus on performance when you have no idea how fast
you want your program to be?  Recent advances in software
development are teaching programmers *never* to optimize
until the program works, and only when there is a clear
requirement for more performance.

If you are really concerned about performance, you will 
always be able to get more than a 10 times speedup by 
switching to a compiled language over Python.  Use of
Python should imply you are more interested in readability
and ease of use, and thus speed of *development*, over
speed of execution.

(Shorter answer: don't grow any grey hairs over it.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com