>> i only write ten records like this: >> name sex age
>> jim male 22 >> tom male 23 >> lucy female 21 ... >> but i find the size of this file .oh my god , it is about 24k >> the file is too large ! is it normal ? Yes. It's the nature of packages like Berkeley DB, gdbm and dbm (the packages mediate access to the database file under the covers) that they trade space for time. The files they create are not simple text files. They are organized to permit quick access to records by key and to permit average time fast insertion. Skip -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list