in reply to I've got an enormous...file

DB_File is good. DBM::Deep was designed for this. And, the nice part is that you don't need to change any part of your script other than the Storable::retrieve part. The rest just assumes that it's a hash. :-)

My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?