but no saved files in the /data/ folder.

Is your /data/ directory really at the root of the filesystem? That would be unusual. Pass it the actual path if not.

Try printing $ff->error after the call to fetch to see more detail of what's going wrong. See also the Basic Debugging Checklist.

it is a windows machine and it is in the C:\ directory. so C:\data\ is the path. to test that, I updated it to download to both /data/ and a new subdirectory called: /data/documents/ changed it to this:

#$path='/data/';
$path= '/data/documents/';

while (my $ref = $query->fetchrow_hashref()) {
   print "url: $ref->{url}\n";
   my $ff = File::Fetch->new(uri=>$ref->{url});
   my $where = $ff->fetch( to => '$path');
   my $error= $ff->error();
   print $error;
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and the output is the same. no error messages. changing it from print $error to print $ff, I get the link followed by: File::Fetch=HASH(0x30d2a18)

my $where = $ff->fetch( to => '$path');

Again, you are enclosing a variable inside single quotes, so it won't be interpolated. Remove the quotes for more success.

Here is an SSCCE showing how to use File::Fetch successfully.

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Fetch;
use Test::More tests => 1;

my $url = 'https://www.perlmonks.org/?part=1;displaytype=displaycode;n
+ode_id=11145569;abspart=1';

my $ff = File::Fetch->new (uri => $url);

my $loc = $ff->fetch (to => '/tmp/');

ok -f $loc, "Downloaded file to $loc";
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Try examining the return value of fetch like this in your code to find the saved file.

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