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Re: Caldera installation - something Debian should learn



> I have read it. Keeping data in a text file that needs to be parsed
> is an antiquated notion that needs to be eliminated. The information
> contructs are correct, however.

no no no! keeping data in a text file may be an old notion, but is not
antiquated and *definitely* does not need to be eliminated. quite the
contrary, in fact. text files for configuration information are Very Good
Things (tm) because *text files can be edited however one wants*. forcing
the sysadmin to depend on a possibly buggy, definitely obscure admintool is
always a bad thing. parsing a text file, otoh, is comparatively easy to do,
especially since it has been done already numerous times for just about any
kind of structure.

binary databases, by contrast, have only one virtue: they are slightly
faster to look at. this does not even begin to compare with the advantage of
being able to edit the file. you can have some speed savings by building an
index of the database to be used by the administration tool, but it's not
really worth the effort imho.

--phouchg
"For a price I'd do about anything, except pull the trigger: for that I'd
need a pretty good cause" -- Queensryche, "Revolution Calling"
PGP 5.0 key (0xE024447449) at http://cif.rochester.edu/~jpt/pubkey.txt


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