• dan@upvote.au
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      1 year ago

      SQLite explicitly encourages using it as an on-disk binary format. The format is well-documented and well-supported, backwards compatible (there’s been no major version changes since 2004), and the developers have promised to support it at least until the year 2050. It has quick seek times if your data is properly indexed, the SQLite library is distributed as a single C file that you can embed directly into your app, and it’s probably the most tested library in the world, with something like 500x more test code than library code.

      Unless you’re a developer that really understands the intricacies of designing a binary data storage format, it’s usually far better to just use SQLite.

      • H4mi@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I don’t even use a file system on my storage drives. I just write the file contents raw and try to memorize where.

          • 257m@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Sounds inefficient. You can only store 8 gigs and goes away when you shut off your computer? I just put it on punch cards and feed it into my machine.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        1 year ago

        Linux mostly doesn’t use file extensions… It relies on “magic bytes” in the file.

        Same with the web in general - it relies purely on MIME type (e.g. text/html for HTML files) and doesn’t care about extensions at all.

        • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          “Magic bytes”? We just called them headers, back in my day (even if sometimes they are at the end of the file)

          • dan@upvote.au
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            1 year ago

            The library that handles it is literally called “libmagic”. I’d guess the phrase “magic bytes” comes from the programming concept of a magic number?

            • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              I did not know about that one! It makes sense though, because a lot of headers would start with, well yeah, “magic numbers”. Makes sense.