python 2.3.3 has a discrepancy with the documentation
at http://docs.python.org/lib/module-bsddb.htm

In section:
> 7.13 bsddb -- Interface to Berkeley DB library

for hashopen, btopen and rnopen, the documentation
states that:

> The optional flag identifies the mode used to open
the file. It >may be "r" (read only, default)

It turns out that 'r' is in fact not the default option
for any of
these 3 in Python 2.3.3.
The default option for the flag parameter turns out to
be 'c'. I had
some trouble with using the bsddb module in conjunction
with make, and finally resorted to reading the source
code to find out what was wrong.

The actual source code has:

def hashopen(file, flag='c', mode=0666, pgsize=None,
ffactor=None, nelem=None,
            cachesize=None, lorder=None, hflags=0):

def btopen(file, flag='c', mode=0666,
            btflags=0, cachesize=None, maxkeypage=None,
minkeypage=None,
            pgsize=None, lorder=None):

def rnopen(file, flag='c', mode=0666,
            rnflags=0, cachesize=None, pgsize=None,
lorder=None,
            rlen=None, delim=None, source=None, pad=None):

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Fred Drake has fixed this in the documentation source

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Marking as closed.