databases/rubygem-gdbm 2.1.1,2 FreeBSD

Ruby extension for GNU dbm (gdbm) -- a simple database engine for storing key-value pairs on disk.

GNU dbm is a library for simple databases. A database is a file that stores key-value pairs. Gdbm allows the user to store, retrieve, and delete data by key. It furthermore allows a non-sorted traversal of all key-value pairs. A gdbm database thus provides the same functionality as a hash. As with objects of the Hash class, elements can be accessed with []. Furthermore, GDBM mixes in the Enumerable module, thus providing convenient methods such as #find, #collect, #map, etc.

A process is allowed to open several different databases at the same time. A process can open a database as a "reader" or a "writer". Whereas a reader has only read-access to the database, a writer has read- and write-access. A database can be accessed either by any number of readers or by exactly one writer at the same time.