Flat file database

[Skip Montanaro]

    Art> Is there any Python module designed to simplify the use of a plain
    Art> text file as a flat file database?

Several others have mentioned various possibilities.  If Python
2.3 is available to you, you might consider the csv module.  You can edit
the files with Excel or another spreadsheet.  In your code, you can use the
csv.DictReader class to pull out the fields of interest:

    # just off the top of my head!
    def select(where, csvfile):
        "return rows from csvfile which overlap with dictionary 'where'."

        results = []
        for row in csv.DictReader(csvfile):
            if matches(where, row):
                results.append(row)
        return results

Coding of the matches function is left as an exercise for the reader. <wink>

Skip