If this post looks like the last post, the problem is that it's too long.

If you produced a minimal example that demonstrates the problem you have a chance of people looking at it - I personally have no intention of struggling through the mass that you've included - and there is in fact a good chance that you'll discover the problem yourself in the process. If nothing else, it would at least show an honest attempt to resolve the issue prior to coming here.

I personally am pretty suspicious of: 
tie %chat, "Tie::IxHash";
# other stuff
tie %chat, 'SDBM_File', $chat, O_CREAT | O_RDWR, 0644;

[download]
Tying the same hash to 2 different classes looks odd. I think most likely the last tie takes effect and the previous ones don't matter.

update

I tested some with: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Tie::IxHash;

require SDBM_File;

my %chat;

my $chat = "./list.dbm";                 # location of database

tie %chat, "Tie::IxHash";

print tied(%chat), "\n";

tie(%chat, 'SDBM_File', $chat, O_CREAT | O_RDWR, 0666) 
     or die "Couldn’t tie SDBM file '$chat' $!; aborting";;

if ( !tied %chat ) {
   print "database unsuccessful $!.\n";
}

print tied(%chat), "\n";

[download]
Because of the first tie of %chat, your original if (!tied %chat) does not capture failure of the second tie (to SDBM_File). the 'or die' idiom as part of the 'tie..' is better for this. On my system, the tie to SDBM_File would (often) fail if 'use Fcntl;' wasn't included at the top of the script.



--Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com

In reply to Re: database problems: repost by bobn
in thread database problems: repost by sulfericacid

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.