Hi mwill007,

Please use <code> tags so your code will display properly. See How do I post a question effectively?

In your problem description you say that when you print the string, you get the expected value, and it doesn't work - please tell us the exact error message. Second, you say that when you manually set the SQL to the same value, it works - this leads me to believe that the two strings are actually not the same. Please try using Data::Dumper to output them both, and use the option $Data::Dumper::Useqq=1; to make nonprintable characters easier to see. See the Basic debugging checklist.

Lastly, there are modules to help you to read CSV - Text::CSV - and modules that help building SQL, like SQL::Abstract:

use warnings;
use strict;

# example data
my @dbcolumn = qw/ site_id site_store_type project site_city site_stat
+e site_country project_begin /;
my @splitarray = ('9999','SC OSR','Prebuild','Penfield','NY','US','8/8
+/2016 ');

# make a hash out of two arrays of the same length
my %data = map { $dbcolumn[$_] => $splitarray[$_] } 0..$#dbcolumn;

# build the SQL statement
use SQL::Abstract;
my $sql = SQL::Abstract->new;
my ($stmt, @bind) = $sql->insert('database.database', \%data);

# debug: display the Perl variables holding the SQL
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper($stmt, \@bind);

__END__

$VAR1 = 'INSERT INTO database.database ( project, project_begin, site_
+city, site_country, site_id, site_state, site_store_type) VALUES ( ?,
+ ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ? )';
$VAR2 = [
          'Prebuild',
          '8/8/2016 ',
          'Penfield',
          'US',
          '9999',
          'NY',
          'SC OSR'
        ];
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Hope this helps,
-- Hauke D

Update: Added link to SQL::Abstract, thanks to Your Mother for the inspiration :-)

For mwill007: this response from haukex is exactly what I would have suggested (SQL::Abstract ).

Thanks, I though there was some hidden characters. That option for data dumper is what I was needing the "\n\n". I will keep that in my do not forget pile. First program I have written with alot of string manipulation. I got tired of modifying my database update program, since the data never comes to me the same way. Now I add two lines two the excel file I receive, first line is which database,second line is the database fields with drop downs, the other lines is the data. This way I never have to manipulate the program again.

With complicated if-then logic like this, indentation can be a great way of detecting structural problems. Edit your post to use code tags, please, so we can see any indentation in your source. That will also help with the $x versus [$x] problems too.

References to single array elements should have the $ sigil instead of @:

$dbcolumn[$x] instead of @dbcolumn[$x]
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Your loop contains that variable $x but it really isn't necessary. Using the foreach loop with an array is one way of avoiding array indexes. The following are equivalent:

for ($x = 0; $x <= $#array; $x++) {
  ... $array[$x] ...
}

versus

foreach $element (@array) {
  ... $element ...
}
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