Re: DBM Portability?

[Anonymous Monk]

Your problem is that you are using dbmopen. It uses the first of several possible local dbm implementations. Which means that going from one machine to another its file format does not remain the same. It also means that on a single machine if you install a better dbm implementation, the file format it uses can change on you, causing loss of data.

And no, I have no idea why there aren't BIG RED WARNINGS everywhere about this pitfall.

[Anonymous Monk]

So if I don't want to go through the hassle of recreating DBMs when I copy from one computer to another, and if possible, not to worry about checking versions on all of my computers to make sure they're the same, and I don't want to hassle with using dd or cpio, what options to I have?

[hiseldl]

1. Make sure you are using the same format on each machine. You could use tie %hash, DB_File, 'file'; which specifies which DB type you want to use explicitly (unless you use AnyDBM_File :). Also, dbmopen has been deprecated since Perl 5.
2. Try compressing the data file and then transferring, or, if there's more than one, compress all of them first, and then tar them together.

--
hiseldl
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