Thanks for the suggestions. You're quite right about bind_columns being called after execute; I've been bitten by that in the past.

As for the 4 arguments to bind_columns, and the first argument being undef... I believe this is an anachronism of DBI. I just looked at the manpage, and you're right that it seems to only expect 3 arguments, now.

In the past, though, I *think* the first argument to bind_columns was supposed to be a hash ref. So I got into the habit of using undef as the first arg, because I never cared about passing anything in the hash ref. I can't find that in the DBI manpage anymore, but I did find this:

    bind_columns
        ....
        For compatibility with old scripts, if the first
        parameter is undef or a hash reference it will be
        ignored.
[download]

I don't remember what the hash ref was supposed to hold--nor would I, really, since I never actually used it. :) I always just used undef. Thanks for pointing this out.