SPUG: NDBM questions

[Benjamin Franks]

I have a small NDBM database that is normally written to by a C application.
As the keys and values stored in an NDBM database are character strings,
I'm casting ...  something roughly like.

	struct custom_struct {
	  some complex struct stuff;
	};

	datum key, val;
	struct custom_struct aaa;

	key.dptr="bbb";
	key.dsize=strlen(key.dptr);

	val.dptr=(char *) &aaa;
	val.dsize=sizeof(struct custom_struct);

	/* db is pointer to DBM already opened */
	dbm_store(db, key, val, DBM_REPLACE);

Now when I read the data from the database at a later time, I use memcpy
to move from the stored string back to my struct, as in:

	val = dbm_fetch(db, key)
	memcpy((char *) &aaa, val.dptr, val.dsize);
	/* now work on struct aaa */

Ok, now for the question.  I'm writing a Perl application that reads from
the same database.  However, if I tie a %hash to the ndbm file and then
print out the keys and values, the values are garbled.  Is there a Perl
equivalent to the C memcpy for byte string copies?

One more question.  Let's say I open a handle to this database (or a file
in general) in a parent and fork off children.  The children inherit the
open handle.  Now, if the children close the handle explicitly, does that
mean it closed for the parent as well?  Or will the parent handle remain
open?

Thanks,
--Ben


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