Assuming you are only searching on a small part of each record you could create a key file and store the keys and their offsets, much like is done in a database.

If not, then maybe you could keep a subset of keys, maybe 1 out of 100, then you could binary search to the key equal or less than the one you need and seek forward through the 100 records in between... kind of a reasonable trade-off.

                - Ant
                - Some of my best work - (1 2 3)

In reply to Re: seek backward on compressed file by suaveant
in thread seek backward on compressed file by Anonymous Monk

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