dbm(3x) bug help needed BADLY

[Jon Bennett]

	I believe that I have a bug in my dbm(3X) package.  I wrote
a program to store news header Message-I.D.: 's ( I am working on an
alternate news reader).  The program goes through articles in different
news groups, locates the message id field, and uses it as a key
to store the value returned from time(2).  After the program runs through
all of the articles in the list, all of the articles should be in a 
history file.  When I run the program again, about 1/3 of the articles
are re-read.  The fetch is not finding them in the history file.  The
other 2/3 are in the history file and are not re-read. If I run the
program a second time, storing the articles that are re-read, and
a third time, then the articles are finally marked as all read.  I wrote
a program to traverse the data base using the example code in the manpage
for dbm(3x) (firstkey().. nextkey...) and it retrieves several keys, but when
I fetch the data for they key it returns a null data pointer.

	DATA:
	Computer is Symmetric 375
	OS is Berkley 4.2 (probably modified by Symmetric)
	I looked at /usr/lib/libdbm.a and found it to be 1300 bytes long.
		I decide that this was too short so I looked (ar t) in my
		/lib/libc.a and found most of the entry points for 
		ndbm(?).  This may be of help.
	QUESTIONS:
1.	Am "I" doing something wrong?
2.	Can this be fixed without source code?
3.	Is there a public version of dbm(3x), or equivalent?
-- 
These postings are my own  and do not | Jon "There, that oughta do it" Bennett
represent the opinions of my employer |	jdb at dkstar.UUCP
{decvax hplabs linus rutgers seismo}!gatech!rebel!dkstar!jdb