using selectrow_hashref is exactly what I was looking for. It was killing me having to loop unnecessarily through that single row. Also I think I cannot use selectrow_array, but I will go play with it now to make sure. In regards to having query return no rows, you are completely right. Although this table has 100 million records now sometime in the future I may have parsed all data and there might be no further data to parse Thank you for all these helpful hints, I really appreciate it