Thanks for taking the time to help, but this is above my pay grade. I couldn't get this to work. I ran both and they return the pages without errors but also without the vars I need like the $ID, etc. I'm doing something wrong. As I have it now it works as long as it only displays page 1. As soon as I move to page 2 (which calls the same URL but with the added querystring ?$currentpage=2) it reruns the database search and includes threadIDs I already printed on p. 1. As I read the code it is simply poorly constructed. Like I said, it's above my pay grade.

This script was written years ago in Perl 4 and I'm trying to go through and fix things but I need to just hire someone to do it. I think I will just increase the titlesperpage to 50 and call it a day. Nobody should get that many messages.

UPDATE: I may have made some progress. If I use the GROUP BY threadID in the SQL search, I can get rid of this if statement:

if ($threadIDlist !~ /\b\Q$threadID\E\b/) {
}
[download]

And I don't think I need to count the total number of threads anymore. I've commented that section out below and it seems to work.

I end up with the following. Please forgive me if this is not "runable" as your previous note suggests. The connections to the database are wrapped in subroutines. I've been told this is a bad way of doing it but that's what is in here.

    
    
    $currentpage = param('currentpage');
    
    &Conn_to_DB;
    $SQL =  "Select * from messages where (username='$username' or ton
+ame='$username') and message!='' GROUP BY threadID order by dateadded
+ desc, ID desc";
    &DoSQL;
    $recordcount = $sth->rows;


    if ($recordcount <= 0) {
      print "Error message goes here.";
    } else {
    
    
# Separately counting the total number of threads is no longer needed 
+(apparently).    
#   $SQL2 = "Select * from messages where (username='$username' or ton
+ame='$username') and message!='' order by ID desc";
#     &DoSQL2;
#          %threads;
#          while ($pointer2 = $sth2->fetchrow_hashref){
#             $threads{$pointer2->{'threadID'}}++; 
#            }
#            $threadcount_all = scalar keys %threads; 

           
    
        $titlesperpage = 10 if ($titlesperpage eq "");
        $currentpage = 1 if ($currentpage eq "" || $currentpage < 1);
        $startcount = ($currentpage - 1) * $titlesperpage + 1;
        $stopcount = $currentpage * $titlesperpage;
        $current_count = 0;
        $threadcount=0;
        $threadIDlist = "";
        
        while (($pointer2 = $sth2->fetchrow_hashref) && ($current_coun
+t <= $stopcount)){
            $current_count++;
  
            if ($current_count >= $startcount && $current_count <= $st
+opcount) {

            $name = $pointer2->{'name'};
            $message = $pointer2->{'message'};
            $date = $pointer2->{'date'};
        
        
            #this is no longer needed    
            #if ($threadIDlist !~ /\b\Q$threadID\E\b/) {
            #$threadIDlist=$threadID . "," . $threadIDlist;
            #$threadcount++;    
        
        
        
        print qq~ Content goes here~;
    
    
    
            #} end if ($threadIDlist !~ /\b\Q$threadID\E\b/) {
        
          } #end if ($current_count >= $startcount && $current_count <
+= $stopcount) {
      
    } #end while (($pointer2 = $sth2->fetchrow_hashref) && ($current_c
+ount <= $stopcount)){
           
           
           
sub Conn_to_DB{
  use DBI;
  $DSN = "DBI:mysql:database_name:db.domain.com";
  $sqluser = "user";
  $sqlpass = "pw";
  $dbh = DBI->connect($DSN,$sqluser,$sqlpass)
    || die "Cannot connect: $DBI::errstr\n" unless $dbh;
  return;
} 

           
sub DoSQL{
  eval {
    $sth = $dbh->prepare($SQL);
  }; # end of eval

  # check for errors
  if($@){
    $dbh->disconnect;
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
    print "An ERROR occurred! $@\n";
    exit;
  } else {
    $sth->execute;
  } # end of if/else
  return ($sth);
}


sub DoSQL2{
  eval {
    $sth2 = $dbh->prepare($SQL2);
  }; # end of eval

  # check for errors
  if($@){
    $dbh->disconnect;
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
    print "An ERROR occurred! $@\n";
    exit;
  } else {
    $sth2->execute;
  } # end of if/else
  return ($sth2);
}
[download]

The above seems to work. It returns only the number of threads as titlesperpage asks for. Please let me know if I'm wrong.

Really appreciate the help.