Hello Travis, I'd suggest you take a look at the Tie:File module, which lets you treat files as arrays. This would make it easy for you to change the data in your file, assuming the data were able to be dealt with in this way. Of course, I'm only guessing here, because I haven't seen your data. Here's a simple example of using Tie::File: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use Tie::File;
use strict;
use warnings;

my $filename = "dbfile.txt";
tie my @array, 'Tie::File', $filename or die "can't open $filename: $!
+";

$array[13] = 'blah';            # line 13 of the file is now 'blah'
print $array[42];               # display line 42 of the file

__END__

[download]

In reply to Re: flat file databases by beable
in thread flat file databases by Travis M.

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.