Hi and thank you for a fantastic piece of software - I have learned more about Perl by playing around with it than any book ever taught me.

I have now reached my Perl limit and am looking for advice on how to get a subroutine that opens a database, finds a record based on its ID, goes to a specific field and adds something to that field, then saves the record/database and closes it (with a file lock). This should all happen in the background.

I am trying to get this database working for a Tropical Fish Forum. Here is an example:

Database is ID|NAME|SENT

I have written a Perl subroutine that generates a standard email based on search results and the user can then click a "Send" button which calls a subroutine to print and then update the relevant record with a reference for the email that has been sent. The databse before would look like:

1|Paul|234

And after should look like:

1|Paul|234~~235

I don't mind if there are multiple mentions of the email reference (i.e. 234~~235~~234~~240). I am working with about 1500 records.

I'd appreciate any help of how I can do the automatic search and modification through the .db file. I'm sure it is just a Perl question.

Many thanks in advance an e-beers all round.