I am currently reading about the Perl DBI module, and the first chapter explained about the Berkley DB_File and tieing hashes to a file. I followed the example from the book and succesfully got it working. However I then wrote a method that would return a particular part of a string thus (main parts of code) 
my $db = tie %database, 'DB_File', "simpleinsert.dat",O_CREAT | O_RDWR
+, 0666 or die "Cannot initialise database";

$database{'anthony1'}=new contacts_db('anthony',
                                     'ant@hot',
                                     '14 road',
                                     '102892',
                                     '34567')->pack();

[download]
I can then access the name by 
my $person = new contacts_db($database{'anthony1'});
$person->unpack_name();

[download]
this then returns 'anthony'.

but if i put 

$database{'anthony1'}->unpack_name();

[download]
nothing is brought back, why?????????? 
--
Casey
   I am a superhero.

In reply to Re-post: hashes frustration by cwest
in thread hashes frustration by ant

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.