I edited the storable with... vim!!!! :P I actually did a range search and replace with vim and it worked like a charm. When looking at the file within vim, you can see hints of the data structure (scalars, arrays, and hashes). Along with running 'strings' against it, I was able to see what might be sensitive data and my intent was to censor it while keeping a storable that would reproduce the error.

The lesson I learned was that I needed to keep the string length the exact same as the orginal file (which now makes perfect sense knowing that there are read length markers before each string).

Before a Storable was a kind of mystical thing that just worked, and its really strange (for me anyway) to now be able to "see" and somewhat understand the file in a hex editor.

I also applied your "patch" with vim as well, I removed the 7 characters you suggested and found another 0x05 entry in the file and yanked an pasted it in place. Then I ran my test case code and the damn thing thawed :) (I've did attempt to use an hex editor on my power book with little success because I've never really used one before). Anyway, vim++ :P