DB_File - help

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

Hi monks, Please enlighten me on the following code:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use DB_File;

my (%h, $k, $v);
my $file = "/tmp/data_db"; # This is the problem

tie %h, "DB_File", "$file", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0777, $DB_HASH 
  or die "Cannot open file $file $!\n";

$h{"apple"} = "red";
$h{"orange"} = "orange";
$h{"banana"} = "yellow";
$h{"tomato"} = "red";

# code to print keys and values of hash - no problem here
[download]

What puzzled me is the line my $file = "/tmp/data_db";There's no directory 'tmp' in the server and I've no idea where the database file 'data_db' is called. When I changed the directory 'tmp' to, say, 'data', the script died. Am I missing something? What's so special about 'tmp'? Why does the script work only with 'tmp' as the directory?

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Re: DB_File - help
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Nov 24, 2002 at 15:01 UTC

my $dir = "/whatever";
my $file = $dir."/file";
die "cannot write to $dir : $!" unless -W $dir;
[download]

update: There ain't nothing special about /tmp as far as perl/DB_File is concerned. /tmp must exist, otherwise the program would have died.

MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!
** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

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[d/l]

Re: Re: DB_File - help

by kiat (Vicar) on Nov 24, 2002 at 15:30 UTC

Thanks, PodMaster! I got it to work :) I was changing the permission via WS_FTP (the GUI FTP program) and for some reasons, that didn't work. After I read your advice, I got into the server using MS-DOS FTP and typed the command to chmod the directory to 777. That worked! Been stucked for hours until you came to my rescue :)

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