Your problem with the key being in the DB file. It's in the docs of BerkeleyDB (v3):
Space freed by deleting key/data pairs from a Btree or Hash database is never returned to the filesystem, although it is reused where possible. This means that the Btree and Hash databases are grow-only. If enough keys are deleted from a database that shrinking the underlying file is desirable, you should create a new database and insert the records from the old one into it.
So chances are that DB doesn't blank the items, but just removes the references.

If deleting the hash doesn't work, did you try the object interface? You can do $db = tie %hash .... and later $db->db_del or something similar.

Hope this helps,

Jeroen
"We are not alone"(FZ)

In reply to Re: tied hashed and deleting keys and their valeus by jeroenes
in thread tied hashed and deleting keys and their valeus by skazat

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