i figured it out later that day; i was running
slackware 7.1 current (as opposed to stable)...
here's what they had to say in the Changelog:
 Tue Feb 20 14:10:32 PST 2001
d1/perl.tgz: Recompiled without -lndbm to fix DB_File
module. Thanks to Toshikazu Yoshikawa for posting a problem
report and fix.

[download]

since my copy was outdated, all i had to do was recompile perl (!!5.6.1!!) and remember not to flip that switch (8

many thanks to Ant and everyone else out there who helped me out.

In reply to Re: need help with DB_File by strfry()
in thread need help with DB_File by strfry()

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