Thank you for replying after all, Anonymous Monk. You said: I was hoping that anydbm_file would allow me to use whichever was available, but the documentation page for anydbm is very sparse, and doesn't give very good syntax or examples.

In my understanding, the sniplet of the manual shows that AnyDBM_File does exactly that, allow you use all available DBM drivers. It does so with an example of it's syntax. I don't want to discuss whether it's a good example. It was sufficient to get me going.

I am sorry I did not help you to your own gain, which I intended to do. But you failed to answer my question as well, so we could not arrive at understanding the other.

Being a foreigner myself, I am very sorry you felt ill-treated by my post. That was definitely not intended.
On a side note: speaking slowly sometimes helps understanding, whereas speaking loudly only helps in noisy and crowded spaces.

Cheerio, Sören