A skiplist is a type of data structure like a binary tree, b tree, balanced tree..... Your question is meaningless without the context of *what* created the data structure and serialised it to disk. How do you create the db files from scratch no prob without the ability to read them? I assume it is cyrus related in which case you need to look at cyrusdb_skiplist.c, and RTFS for details on the file format so you can hack together a widget to extract the data. If you want more functionality you are looking a buliding a full blown XS interface to it.

Unless you have to work with the output of another program you would do far better to use say Berkeley DB via perl.

Thanks jZed...this was my first recourse. I am a big fan of CPAN. After reading the documentation for this module, you will notice copious information regarding creating skiplists yet none for reading searialized skiplist files to database.