Here is a simple indexing command (‘$’ is the UNIX prompt):
$ af -i -d mydb -C -v *.txt
The -i option indicates that we want to index files, and the
list of files is expected to be at the end of the line (*.txt).
The -d option specifies the database name, in this case,
mydb. The -C option indicates that we want to create
a new database (overwriting any existing database called mydb).
Finally, the -v option tells af
to print
information about the indexing process as it goes along. (Another
option, -m, may be added to increase the amount of memory
used for indexing, which will generally reduce indexing time.)
The indexing process creates a group of files beginning with
mydb (i.e. mydb.db, mydb.dt, and several
others). These are the index files that make up the database. We can
use the af
tool with this database to search the files we
have indexed.
Note: As an optional step after indexing, the database can be
linearized. In the example above, this would be done with
the command, |