[Exim] Reading DBM files with Perl

I would like to be able to access files built with exim_dbmbuild from a
Perl script. I built Exim (3.02) on a standard Solaris 7 system without
any special DBM configuration so I assume that it is using NDBM. I tried
to open the aliases DBM file (aliases.dir & aliases.pag) with the
following:

#! /usr/bin/perl
use NDBM_File;
tie %alias, 'NDBM_File', '/var/spool/exim/tables/aliases', 0, 0 ||
    die "Can't open aliases: $!\n";

but it just dies with: Can't open aliases:

I also tried opening /etc/mail/aliases like in the example in the Perl
manual but that failed in the same way.

Can anybody point me in the right direction, please.

Thank you.

Richard
--
Richard Gilbert
Corporate Information and Computing Services
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK
Phone: +44 114 222 3028 Fax: +44 114 222 3040