No, I was not using GDBM. My point was just that I didn't think it was a problem with the method I was using to write or another error in my script. I'm actually thinking about using DB_File or just plain NDBM with flock. That's probably pretty much what GDBM does under the tie anyways (actually, the tie just gives you access to the C library, which I'm sure does file locking for you, likely with race condition checking, etc.)