If your partway searches are from the beginning of the words an index should work fine, because essentially it is a sorted list of words where a binary search can be performed. If a database by seeing "partway search" stupidly refuses to use an index, whether its from the beginning or not, you can always make your own. (index not DB:-) But lets talk about the other possibility: Random starting points. Then your best way is to store your text bzip2-compressed. Because a Burrough-Wheeler-transformed text is its own index for fulltext search. The precise algo is in an old DDJ, but I don't know if it's online by the time you read this. Google for the names of the developers.

In reply to Re: Large Constant Database in Text File by Anonymous Monk
in thread Large Constant Database in Text File by stephentyler

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.