GNU Recutils - Manage recfiles (human-editable databases)

Dec 21, 2022 · 1 min read · data management cli  ·
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GNU Recutils is a set of tools and libraries to access human-editable, plain text databases called recfiles.

A recfile is a text file with specific format to store structured information, such as a database. Being a text format, the information can be edited and updated using a common text editor.

GNU Recutils provides the functions to perform operations on recfiles, such as submitting queries, inserting or updating records, as in traditional databases, or joining data from different sources.

An example of Rec file is the following, from the documentation:

 1# This database contains a list of both real and fictional people
 2# along with their age.
 3
 4Name: Ada Lovelace
 5Age: 36
 6
 7Name: Peter the Great
 8Age: 53
 9
10# Name: Matusalem
11# Age: 969
12
13Name: Bart Simpson
14Age: 10
15
16Name: Adrian Mole
17Age: 13.75

The records are separated by empty lines. Fields are followed by the colon, and the value just follows. Comments are supported, as well as different types of data.

Moreover, the content of fields can be encrypted to preserve the access to the corresponding data.

References