shelve keeping old (unused) data around?

[AK]

In article <mailman.1064867319.29019.python-list at python.org>, Skip
Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     nospam> I'm using shelve module in python 2.3 and I found that it does a
>     nospam> very odd thing, at least very unexpected to me. It seems that
>     nospam> the data of a replaced or deleted key stays in filename.dat
>     nospam> file.
> 
> The bits which actually get written to the disk depend on the underlying
> library writing those bits.  The shelve module has no say in the matter.
> All it does to create a file is ask anydbm to open it, then pickle the
> values so they can be written out as strings.  Again, shelve doesn't do that
> directly.  It asks the object created by anydbm to do that.  You didn't say
> (perhaps you don't know) what the underlying library is on your system.  It
> seems likely that the library deletes the key, but leaves the data dangling
> (perhaps also marked free so it can reuse it at a later time).
> 
> Skip

Okay, as long as it's not a bug.. For the record, it seems like it's
bsddb on this side. Thanks, Skip!

 -AK


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