Own lil' "database" ?

Hi,

I'm looking for some kind of tutorial for writing a tool that does the following:
It reads multiple values and compares them to a small database and then reads a string from the database which is assigned to the values.
So lets say we gather val1, val2 and val3 with the program it would be cool to have a database file with a format like that:
/* val1, val2, val3, matching string */
0, 0, 0, "Stringallzero"
0, 1, 0, "Stringval2is1"
473, 2, 5, "Yet another string"

The "," as separator would work for me as I won't have to use them in the strings.
Can this be done somehow easily and can the performance keep up with a "in-code" database using switch() - which is my current solution:

Code:

---

switch (val 1)
{
  case 0: switch (val 2)
  {
      [...]

---

This is ugly and makes the binaries quite big...and the database can't be altered without re-compiling which is quite annoying, too...

So if anyone has a piece of code or knows some good tutorial please let me know ;)

Peter

Quote:

---

can the performance keep up with a "in-code" database using switch

---

Nope, opening a file and reading from it, will in most cases (certainly the first time) have to hit the hard drive, which is a slow operation. However, on modern computers you might well not notice a difference if the file isn't several Mb big.

I assume that when you say database, you actually mean datafile. Have a look at the FAQ for information on how to read from files!

QuantumPete

Instead of coming up with your own data format and then writing a parser for it, you should consider using SQLite, which is a relational database engine that can easily be embedded into your program.

I'd recommed berkely DB since you basically just want to map keys to string values. It can be run from disk or embedded as well.