Have a look at the "CAVEATS / ISSUES / BUGS" section in the documentation:

<quote>
Unfortunately, autovivification doesn't always work. This appears to be a bug in Perl's tie() system, as Jakob Schmidt encountered the very same issue with his DWH_FIle module (see http://search.cpan.org/search?module=DWH_File), and it is also mentioned in the BUGS section for the MLDBM module (see http://search.cpan.org/search?module=MLDBM). Basically, your milage may vary when issuing statements like this
</quote>

In reply to Re: DBM::Deep Problem by astroboy
in thread DBM::Deep Problem by travisbickle34

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