Xapian discuss - Feb 2008 - allterms_begin(prefix) on a WritableDatabase

Is there any reason that, in the Perl bindings, the allterms_begin/end in 
Search::Xapian::WritableDatabase do not allow a prefix, while those in 
Search::Xapian::Database do? (I want to fetch all the Q prefixed terms from 
Xapian and compare them against our database to see if any Xapian entries 
can be removed as they're no longer present in the database.) I'm happy
to
supply a patch if that's helpful, although it wouldn't be any more than 
copying the relevant prefix bits from the Search::Xapian::Database section 
as I'm no XS expert :-)

ATB,
Matthew

On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 07:35:24PM +0000, Matthew Somerville
wrote:
> Is there any reason that, in the Perl bindings, the allterms_begin/end in 
> Search::Xapian::WritableDatabase do not allow a prefix, while those in 
> Search::Xapian::Database do?
Not a good reason.  I just only updated one version of the wrapper.

Ideally, the Search::Xapian::Database methods would be automatically
inherited by Search::Xapian::WritableDatabase, but that doesn't seem to
happen.  I don't know if this is just how XS works, or if we're doing
something wrong.

I'm hoping we can move Search::Xapian to use SWIG at some point, but
that needs SWIG to support "directors" for Perl, which is doesn't
yet.
There is a somewhat dated patch though.
> I'm happy to supply a patch if that's helpful
Yes, that would be handy.  A small regression test would be useful
too (assuming there's one for Database, just repeating that for
WritableDatabase would be fine.
> although it wouldn't be any more than 
> copying the relevant prefix bits from the Search::Xapian::Database section 
> as I'm no XS expert :-)
That's the way to do it, unless we can persuade it to inherit.

Cheers,
    Olly