FYI, I suspect the problem is related to the arrangement of the code where I enter the values into the DBM. The line

$synusers{$fields{'updalumname'}}="

and those few that follow, I had to change a bit when I first wrote them. You'll note that the value assignments are spread strangely over 5 lines of code. I was having problems (redisplaying values in HTML) that were seemingly related to the carriage returns in the code.