Hello fellow monks, I am trying to create a hash of keys from usernames, and each key would contain a hash of details. When I do it this way it works fine:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
my %users;
$users{mulander}->{email} = 'netprobe@gmail.com';
print "$users{mulander}->{email}\n";

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I would like to store the data using dbmopen so I tried: 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
dbmopen my %users,'users',664;
$users{mulander}->{email} = 'netprobe@gmail.com';
print "$users{mulander}->{email}\n";
dbmclose %users;

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But when I do that, I keep getting this error: 
Can't use string ("HASH(0x1865480)") as a HASH ref while "strict refs"
+ in use

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I wonder why does this work fine when used on a ordinardy hash and fails when I open the hash via dbmopen? What am I doing wrong? Is a dbmopen hash different than an ordinary hash? And if so should I use another method to tie this data structure to a file? ( maybe Tie::Scalar or something? ).
I gone through perldoc and Beginning Perl and unfortunetly did not find the anwser, maybe one of you brothers could enlighten me.
Thanks in advance.

In reply to dbmopen and hashes of hashes by mulander

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