Thank you for your replay guys!!! I think the issue is trying to check if data exists first before inserting, so it seems I have to do one row of data at a time, unless there is a way to test if data row exists then how I was doing it. I am reading all of the suggested links everyone has passed along, This is my first crack on using a DB like this.

my $sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO HLDdata (Data) VALUES (?)");
foreach $txt (@TXT) {
  print "$txt\n";
  open(IN,"$txt") || warn("cant open $txt");
  while(<IN>){
    $line = $_;
    my $sth = $dbh->prepare( "select count(*) from HLDdata where Data 
+= '$line'");
    $sth->execute();
    my ($data) = $sth->fetchrow();
    print "$data \n";
    if ($data ne 0){
       print "record exist not adding\n";
       &Logit("record exist not adding");
    }else{
       my ($Data) = $line;
       $sth->execute();
       $line =~s/\|/\t/g;
       # print "$line\n";
       print OUT "$line";
   }
  }
[download]