--- Tom Allison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My first guess is to use "tie" to access a file of type DB_File.
> The number of records is small <1000 but the record structure is 
> going to be either a hash of hashes, hash of arrays, or similar.

One possible solution depends on your data structure.
Frequently hashes of hashes are convenient, but can 
eat up a lot of memory and program speed when they
get large. On the other hand, if your keys allow it,
you can often compund the *keys* and end up with a 
single hash, which is easily storable via DBM. e.g.:

  my %h;
  for my $l ('a'..'z') {
      for my $n (0..9) {
          $h{$l}{$n} = $someData;
      }
  }

That's hard to store with a DBM because the hash is in layers.
but:

  my %h;
  for my $l ('a'..'z') {
      for my $n (0..9) {
          $h{"$l\t$n"} = $someData;
      }
  }

That stores easily in a DBM, and only requires that you 
correctly rebuild the key later. Use a standard delimiter
(I like tabs, but there are all sorts of options) and
you can read the keys and use split() to extract pieces,
etc.

HTH,
Paul

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