Android: custom prop vs. .txt?

[Richard Gaskin]

Ralph DiMola wrote:

 > -----Original Message-----
 > Issuing a save command to the stack with the props should take
 > slightly longer than writing the data to a file, but with only
 > 10k the difference will be negligible.
 >
 > If you don't need to save often then using custom props will
 > provide good efficiency and simple, robust behavior.
 >
 > - rg/4w
 >
 > On Android the stack is in the engine folder that is read-only.
 > It resides in the apk(a zip formatted file). The engine folder
 > is virtual and read only. If you want to modify a stack it needs
 > to be a separate stack that you move to the documents folder.
 > Any file that you want read/write must be moved from the assets
 > folder to the documents folder(or SD card).

Good reminder.  SD is by far the preferred option, since there's usually 
much more space available there.

The restriction about saving a stack will also apply if the stack with 
the properties is part of the stack file that is the executable.

My tip on the value of using stack files for data storage assumes that 
the stack file has had its filename property set to an appropriate 
location for writes.

Once that's done, a lot of very convenient name-value-pair programming 
can be done easily and robustly using custom props in stack files.

If the nature of the data requires relationality, then a relational 
database like SQLite will be essential.  But for simple name-value pairs 
it's hard to beat the simplicity and efficiency of custom props.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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