I'm not sure what you mean by 'the report function' or 'the flat-file', are you referring to another piece of code ? To confirm the problem is in the database, run your test code against the database thus ;

    #read
    tie %test, "NDBM_File", 'mtime', O_RDWR|O_EXCL, 0644;
    foreach  (keys %test) {
        print "$_: $test{$_}\n";
    }
    untie %test;
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If this shows only keys, try it with the other database 'type'.

    #read
    tie %test, "NDBM_File", 'type', O_RDWR|O_EXCL, 0644;
    foreach  (keys %test) {
        print "$_: $test{$_}\n";
    }
    untie %test;
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If the 'type' db is storing strings OK but the 'mtime' db is not, I give up !
poj