not sure if this is a beginners issue -- tie with DB_File

[Kat]

Ok, I have exhausted all other options.  This code used to work, and now, 
no matter what I use for a path, I always get an error opening the file... 
Does anyone see anything obvious here in this snippit??

#!/usr/bin/perl

#This script will return quiz responses to a browser. It reads from a quiz 
database file
#which has a structure as follows:
#Record Key = StudentID+StudentName+Department+Company+QuestionID
#Record Value = StudentID, StudentName, Department, Company, QuestionID, 
QuestionName, Chapter, Type, Answer, Grade, PageNumber, Weight, Tries
#Field values are delimited by the | character.

#Load the Database Module
use Fcntl;
use DB_File;

#parse the response data
&parse_form_data(*submit_data);

$database = "/anthing I put here, whether valid or not, makes no difference";


for(0..255){
         $escapes{chr($_)} = sprintf("%%%02X", $_);
}

#Open the database file and tie it to the %file variable
tie(%file, "DB_File", $database, O_RDWR, 0644, $DB_HASH)
   or &return_error (500, "Quiz Control File Error", "Failure-Could not 
open quiz database!");

#Get the Student Information to return scores for
$query_ID = $submit_data{'StudentID'};
$query_Name = $submit_data{'StudentName'};
$query_Department = $submit_data{'Department'};
$query_Company = $submit_data{'Company'};
$query_Chapter = $submit_data{'Chapter'};
$query_Title = $submit_data{'Title'};
$query_ListTitle = $submit_data{'ListTitle'};
$query_Prompt1 = $submit_data{'Prompt1'};
$query_Prompt2 = $submit_data{'Prompt2'};
$query_Prompt3 = $submit_data{'Prompt3'};
$query_Prompt4 = $submit_data{'Prompt4'};