One of the many plugins for Perl's DBI module is the DBD::CSV module.  This allows users to treat a CSV file as if it were a real database.  Instead of manually reading a file line-by-line and parsing it to find the fields I want, I can write code like this:

$dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:CSV:f_dir=/foo/bar;"
   . "csv_eol=\r\n;"
   . "csv_sep_char=\t;");
$sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * from foo where fn='Dave'");
$sth->execute();
$dbh->do("DELETE from foo where fn='Dave'");

The advantage of this is primarily: 
- easier code to write, and 
- easy portability to a real database later (almost as simple as changing all references from DBD:CSV to DBD:MySQL)

I know PHP4 is moving in the direction of a DBI-like solution, and that's great.  In the meantime, would it be possible to add CSV "database" support to PHP?  (csv_connect, csv_query, csv_fetch_array, etc.) to simulate the operations of a database on a CSV file?

Thanks!