Language question -- file = variable ?

[William Park]

Well, not really weird.  Just trying to recycle old solution. :-)

Current hype about Facebook's Cassandra and Google's BigTable got me interested.  They are just "sparse matrix", or "key-value" where "key" is multi-dimension.  Familiar spreadsheet is a 2D version.  I'm interested in how, in the past, data moved within a spreadsheet and between spreadsheets.  Of course, you can enter "macro formula" into a cell.  But, what if that formula is stored in a file, like a script?  Taking one step more, what if all cells are broken into files?  Then, you'd have something that's older than SQL.  It's so old that it's new again...


I have no idea how Facebook/Google implement theirs behind the scene.  Probably, SQL database for indexing and transaction control, even though they say it's "NoSQL".  

-- 

William


>________________________________
>From: Alex Volkov <avolkov-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
>To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
>Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 11:16:54 AM
>Subject: Re: [TLUG]: Language question -- file = variable ?
>
>
>In python you can write a class that has a file descriptor as a member and then define __add__, __subtract__ and other methods BUT:
>* You can't have slashes in variable names so either you'll need to pass an actual filename when instantiating or do some metaclass trickery that would determine file path from object name, but then you'll have to have your own object naming convention.
>* It sounds like you're trying to solve a problem in a weir way.  What are you trying to solve?
>* You can always write your own domain-specific language. 
>
>Sent from my mobile device.
>On Aug 16, 2011 10:41 AM, "William Park" <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Is there a language which (natively or not) treats a filename like a variable in memory?  For example, to increment a counter stored in a file, you would write something like
>>         /tmp/counter = /tmp/counter + 1
>> which involves both read and write to a file.  If it were normal variable, then it would involve read/write to a memory instead.
>> 
>> Python is the closest I can think of.  But, you need to create a method for read and another method for write.  And, typing more verbose than I would like.
>> 
>> -- 
>> 
>> William
>> --
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