create_datafile_index(3)

✨ NAME ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to the create_datafile_index(3) page from the Allegro manual 💖. create_datafile_index — creates an index for a datafile. Allegro game programming library. No cap, that's the whole vibe.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <allegro.h>

DATAFILE_INDEX *create_datafile_index(const char *filename);

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So like, what does this actually do? It creates an index for a datafile, to speed up loading single objects out of it. This is mostly useful for big datafiles, which you don't want to load as a whole. The index will store the offset of all objects inside the datafile, and then you can load it quickly with load_datafile_object_indexed later. Use destroy_datafile_index to free the memory used by it again. Obsessed, honestly. iykyk.

Note: If the datafile uses global compression, there is no performance gain from using an index, because seeking to the offset still requires to uncompress the whole datafile up to that offset. 💀 not the global compression jump-scare.

Example:

DATAFILE_INDEX *index = create_datafile_index("huge.dat");
DATAFILE *object = load_datafile_object_indexed(index, 1234);
...
unload_datafile_object(object);
destroy_datafile_index(index);

💫 RETURN VALUE 💫

A pointer value which you can pass to load_datafile_object_indexed. It's giving "pass me along" energy, fr fr.

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

go read these next, bestie:

• destroy_datafile_index(3)
• load_datafile_object_indexed(3)

Allegro version 4.4.3, create_datafile_index(3) — that's the whole page, periodt 💅✨