Well, you asked:

• ALWAYS check the return value from open(); you're inconsistent in your error checking
• You use local when you mean my in the error routine.
• You slurp the file rather than reading line by line (granted that if you get to point that that would be an issue you'd really want a real database anyhow . . .)
• You don't do any sort of file locking to guarantee that you don't clobber the database if multiple people hit simultaneously (or close enough to simultaneously)
• eq is for strings, == is for numeric comparisons.

I'll stop there.

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