Designing a Search Engine on perl.com from April. The article deals with exactly what you're asking.

Using flat files is usually the painful consequence of a direct order from above. I agree with the above posts on DBM files. One concern I might point out about using multiple files instead of few large ones is that your operating system will waste a good deal of space due to minimum file size.

In reply to Re: Poor Person's Database by perigeeV
in thread Poor Person's Database by Cody Pendant

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