You've probably already thought through this and know the answer, but just in case...

Is there no alternative design to the one that creates a large file which keeps getting larger, passing the several-GB mark and beyond? It might be more efficient, from a searching standpoint to divide the dataset into records and storing them in a relational database for easy searching capability.

If that's not a possibility, how about at least maintaining fixed-size records or entries in the data file, so that you can seek to specific records within the file quickly, without re-reading it constantly. You could even maintain a separate index file of where "matches" are known to exist.

Of course this is all just speculation, but it seems that if you're re-scanning this file at various intervals, and the file is growing to multi-GB sizes, eventually you'll either need to split it up, or cache the search results to maintain scalability.


Dave

In reply to Re: perl's ability to handle LARGE files by davido
in thread perl's ability to handle LARGE files by Anonymous Monk

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.