I stumbled across a bug in my code that I tracked down to something I am doing with a DBM::Deep file. When I assign the inner key of a DBM hash-of-hrefs to another variable and then try to delete the file, I get an error when the inner key is a href but not when it is a non-ref scalar. 

use strict;
use warnings;

use DBM::Deep;

my $db_file = 'href_nocopy';

{
    my $db = DBM::Deep->new( $db_file );
    $db->{key} = {};
}

print "\nDeleting $db_file\n";
unlink( $db_file ) || warn $!;  # succeeds

$db_file = 'href_copy';

{
    my $db = DBM::Deep->new( $db_file );
    $db->{key} = {};
    my $db2 = $db->{key};
}

print "\nDeleting $db_file\n";
unlink( $db_file ) || warn $!;  # fails (permission denied)

$db_file = 'nonref_copy';

{
    my $db = DBM::Deep->new( $db_file );
    $db->{key} = 1;
    my $db2 = $db->{key};
}

print "\nDeleting $db_file\n";
unlink( $db_file ) || warn $!; # succeeds

[download]

Any ideas? I didn't find any documentation about this elsewhere.

Thanks

In reply to Error deleting DBM::Deep file (ref count?) by bobf

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.