use strict;; use warnings; use Fcntl; # For O_RDWR, O_CREAT, etc. use SDBM_File; my $filename='filename.state'; my %hash; tie(%hash, 'SDBM_File', $filename, O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0666) or die "Couldn't tie SDBM file 'filename': $!; aborting"; use Data::Dumper; print Dumper(\%hash);