Database in a simple ascii file

[Lucio Torre]

Steve Holden wrote:

>"Rafael Mentz Aquino" <pythonlist at zumnet.com.br> wrote ...
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>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 couls always do some testing ...
>
>In fact this is probably the fastest way to do it, for random keys and a
>file that will fit comfortably into memory. The dictionary implementation
>works hard to make sure that access time is roughly constant no matter what
>the size.
>
>Posters have in the past reported using dictionaries of 100,000 elements
>without problems, so your file has to grow some before you hit uncharted
>territory...
>
>regards
> Steve
>--
>http://www.holdenweb.com/
>

I think that ZODB will allow you to have a dictionary bigger than your 
memory. Is that so? Anyone tried it?