>>>>> "F" == Fritz Heinrichmeyer <fritz.heinrichmeyer / fernuni-hagen.de> writes: F> Sorry for the noise, the dbm interface works, it only seems to insist on F> filename ending in ".db". My file had no such ending, so dbm module F> created a new empty database. Is this behavior built into the c library F> or into the interface code (i know i could read the source)? C library, the interface code just do : dbm = 0; if (mode >= 0) { dbm = dbm_open(RSTRING(file)->ptr, O_RDWR|O_CREAT, mode); } if (!dbm) { dbm = dbm_open(RSTRING(file)->ptr, O_RDWR, 0); } if (!dbm) { dbm = dbm_open(RSTRING(file)->ptr, O_RDONLY, 0); } if (!dbm) { if (mode == -1) return Qnil; rb_sys_fail(RSTRING(file)->ptr); } No test is made on the name of the file. Guy Decoux