MSHASH

This file redefines the data-base manipulation primitives of masterscope
so that the masterscope database can be stored out of the user's
address space, on a hash-file.

The function SETDATABASE will establish a remote database or
reopen it:

setdatabase[file;write?;create]  initializes a new database file named
file if create is T, otherwise reopens an existing file, for reading
and writing if write? is T, otherwise read only.  If file is T, changes the
the write? setting for the currently open file.  If file is NIL, simply
closes the current file and eliminates masterscope's knowledge of it.

Once a file is open, then masterscope can be used in the ordinary way.

If a masterscope command is given that causes the database to be updated,
and the file is open read-only, the updates will be stored in core-resident
tables (or swapped tables if MSSWAP is loaded).

Eventually, functions will be provided for flushing the local information
back out to the hash-file.  Hopefully, an interface to the DATABASEFNS
package will be constructed so that the local information for functions
on a particular symbolic file will be flushed to the database hash-file when
the symbolic file is dumped.  If the hash-file is not open for
write at that time, the information would be saved in a .DATABASE
file as is currently the case.


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Ron Kaplan and Larry Masinter