recfiles is a

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

for human-editable,

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a lim ...

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

s. Databases using this file format can be edited using any

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

. Recfiles allow for basic

relational database A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

operations, such as typing, auto-incrementing, as well as a simple join operation. Recutils is a collection of tools, like ''recfmt'', ''recsel'', and ''rec2csv'' used to work with recfile databases. Various software libraries support the format.

Syntax

Data are stored in text files with empty lines separating records. Fields within a record are lines starting with their name and a colon; it is possible to wrap long entries. Multiple record types can be maintained in a single text file.

Example

# This is a recfile document. %rec: Text %type: Year int Author: Doug McIlroy Year: 1964 Note: The Origin of Unix Pipes Title: Unix Text Processing Author: Dale Dougherty Author: Tim O'Reilly Year: 1987 Publisher: Hayden Books Author: William Shakespeare Title: Hamlet Year: 1599 Year: 1600 Year: 1601

Utilities

Recutils from the

GNU Project The GNU Project ( ) is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and Computer hardware, computing dev ...

are a set of free command line utilities to process recfiles. These include: * recsel – search for and print fields from records matching a query * recins – insert a record, or replace existing records * recdel – delete a record, or delete a set of records * recfix – sort the records * recset – add or update individual fields This example command would output the following three lines (of the two original entries, one having two authors): $ recsel -e 'Year > "1900"' -p Author Author: Doug McIlroy Author: Dale Dougherty Author: Tim O'Reilly

References

External links

* Computer file formats Computer-related introductions in 2010 Data serialization formats GNU Project software Lightweight markup languages Open formats Free software programmed in C Software using the GNU General Public License {{Free-software-stub

Syntax

Example

Utilities

See also

References

External links