Original 'dbm' author -- Ken Thompson

[James A. Woods]

#
     He confided this to me at the January Uniforum conference.  We were
discussing chess programming, which is really the motivation for much of his
UNIX work. 

     For a veiled reference to this access method, consult the November,
1982 Bell System Technical Journal, part 2, papers on database work at
Bell Labs.  Thompson's independently developed scheme, not mentioned by name,
was compared with a B-tree method as well as another dynamic hashing
algorithm.

     What I could use is a way of employing this external hashing buddy system 
for full-text searching applications.  Multiple (and duplicate) keys would
need to be accommodated here.  The method of choice so far seems to be
inverted files (c.f. Lesk's 'hunt' and 'inv' code).  Retrieving arbitrary
information in two disk seeks is something to behold.

			-- James A. Woods  (hao!ames-lm!jaw)