Very Computer

I can't find any library that does what I want so
I'm asking for your help.

I would like my program to save to a single file.
Currently it creates many directories and files to
do the saving.

Microsoft's OLE's compound file works well, but
it's not on Linux.  Can you suggest a location/name?

Thanks,
Ching
email ching at aristotech
email dot com

I'm looking for some sort of file-system-within-a-file
type of library.  Some thing that lets me create directories
and files (inside a file); modify, append, shrink, delete, add
those files.  I don't really need permissions on the files/
directories.

For example:
A photo program (my program is EDA related, but I think
this fake photo program is easier to describe) might want to
create a directory for each "topic" and the pictures are
stored inside those directories.  To make it easier to copy
its saved data around, it is preferrable to have all this
directory/file stuff be inside 1 file.

Currently I'm using tar on Linux: I untar my single file into
directories and files, modify with regular file commands.  And
then retar the whole thing when done.  This is proving to be
extremely clumsy.

Thanks.

: I'm looking for some sort of file-system-within-a-file
: type of library.  Some thing that lets me create directories
: and files (inside a file); modify, append, shrink, delete, add
: those files.  I don't really need permissions on the files/
: directories.

Perhaps a dbm file (see `man gdbm' on Linux for the GNU
version).

This will let you store, modify and remove (key,value)
pairs. While these are not as rich as the directory
structures you are talking about, they may be good
enough to fit your application. And dbm files are
fairly efficient too (I've used dbm files up to 1/2 GB
in size), which is probably not true for OLE.

Rich.

--
-      Richard Jones. Linux contractor London and SE areas.        -
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: I'm looking for some sort of file-system-within-a-file type of library.  
: Some thing that lets me create directories and files (inside a file);

Not a library, but the loopback filesystem does exactly this. Some info is
available at:

 http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/linux/looproot.html

--
William McBrine    | http://www.clark.net/~wmcbrine/

Paul.

--Tim Smith