7.7 Standard Module anydbm

anydbm is a generic interface to variants of the DBM database -- dbhash, gdbm, or dbm. If none of these modules is installed, the slow-but-simple implementation in module dumbdbm will be used.

open (filename[, flag[, mode]])

Open the database file filename and return a corresponding object.

If the database file already exists, the whichdb module is used to determine its type and the appropriate module is used; if it doesn't exist, the first module listed above that can be imported is used.

The optional flag argument can be 'r' to open an existing database for reading only, 'w' to open an existing database for reading and writing, 'c' to create the database if it doesn't exist, or 'n', which will always create a new empty database. If not specified, the default value is 'r'.

The optional mode argument is the Unix mode of the file, used only when the database has to be created. It defaults to octal 0666 (and will be modified by the prevailing umask).

error

A tuple containing the exceptions that can be raised by each of the supported modules, with a unique exception anydbm.error as the first item -- the latter is used when anydbm.error is raised.

The object returned by open() supports most of the same functionality as dictionaries; keys and their corresponding values can be stored, retrieved, and deleted, and the has_key() and keys() methods are available. Keys and values must always be strings.