Strange problems with Tie

tame1 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am currently working on a script which involves some RSA encryption, as well as MD5 work.

Here is the troublesome subroutine:

sub get_pubkey {
    my $issuer = shift;
    my %hash;
    tie %hash, 'BerkeleyDB::Hash', -Filename => "/home/httpd/newkeyrin
+g" or die "Cannot tie the hash to that file: $! $BerkeleyDB::Error\n"
+;
    open(TEST, ">> fields_data");
    foreach my $hashkey (keys %hash) {
        print TEST "The pubkey is: $hashkey\n";
        print TEST "The value is: $hash{$hashkey}\n";
        print "The pubkey is: $hashkey<br>\n";
        print "The value is: $hash{$hashkey}<br>\n";
    }
    my $server = "$issuer" . ".PUBLIC";
    my $val = $hash{$server};
    close(TEST);
    untie %hash;
    print "Server is : $server<br>\n";
    print "Public key currently is: $val<br>\n";
    return $val;
}
[download]

Everything seems fine (It all prints out - %hash only contains 2 keys and 2 values) until the final print of the Public Key - THAT comes up blank. $server is set fine, but $val is empty. The sub also returns nada. Can anyone see what I am doing wrong to cause this?

What does this little button do . .<Click>; "USER HAS SIGNED OFF FOR THE DAY"

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Re: Strange problems with Tie by clintp (Curate) on Mar 26, 2001 at 21:43 UTC
`open(TEST, ">> fields_data");` grumble Always check the rsult of system calls...moving on. The keys in the hash are not what you think they are. If print "$foo{$key}" says one thing, but later on $key="X", $val=$foo{$key} says another, then you're $key's aren't the same in both places. Simple as that. (or the DBM is whacked.) In your diagnostics, put some quotemarks around the keys as you print them. Check for unprintables too.	[reply] [d/l]
(Ovid) Re: Strange problems with Tie by Ovid (Cardinal) on Mar 26, 2001 at 21:39 UTC
I can't see anything wrong with your code. Dumb question time: is one of the `$hashkey`s that you print in the foreach loop and exact duplicate of `"$issuer" . ".PUBLIC"`? If not, you'll autovivify the hash entry, which I am guessing will be written to the file, but of course have no value. As a result, you'll have nothing in `$val`. Show us your output. What's in `$issuer`? We'll need to see that to really give good feedback. Cheers, Ovid Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Strange problems with Tie by tame1 (Pilgrim) on Mar 26, 2001 at 22:04 UTC
*BLUSH* Turns out there was a non-printing character difference in the keys. What does this little button do . .`<Click>`; "USER HAS SIGNED OFF FOR THE DAY"	[reply] [d/l]