You might look at ovid's very nice CGI course There are probably nicer ways to do this but this is what you asked for...

use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;

# you got this array from your Database...
my @foo=qw(red blue green purple grey pink black);

print "<SELECT NAME=test> \n";
foreach (@foo){
    print "<OPTION VALUE=\"$_\"> $_\n";
};

print "</SELECT>";
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That could get ugly if anything in @foo contains characters that should be escaped such as > or " ... something CGI.pm's popup_menu will handle for you automatically.

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT

use strict;
use CGI qw/:standard/;

my %colours = (
  '#008000' => 'Green',   '#808000' => '> Olive',
  '#00FF00' => '> Lime',  '#008080' => '> Teal',
);

print header,
  popup_menu(
    -name   => 'colour',
    -labels => \%colours,
    -values => [ sort keys %colours ],
  );
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Also, if you're using DBI.pm and don't plan on labeling your <SELECT> values, then you can just pass in the output from DBI.pm's selectall_arrayref method.

print popup_menu(
  -name   => 'colours'
  -values => $dbh->selectall_arrayref('SELECT name FROM colour'),
);
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    --k.

Tip: carefully read `perldoc CGI` and `perldoc DBI` if you're going to do much CGI programming in Perl. (I realize that is begging for someone to point out in the following something that contradicts one of those documents. :)

I tested this, so hopefully pasting didn't mess anything up. (Change the $table and $sql in the following.)

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
# Demonstrate a scrolling list with DBI

use strict;
use CGI;
use DBI;

use vars qw($q $table);

$q = new CGI;
$table = 'makes';


MAIN: {
        my ($makes, $html);

        $makes = get_makes();

        if (ref $makes) {
                print makes_page($makes);
        } else {
                print error_page('Blah!');
        }

}

sub get_makes {
        my ($dbh, $sql, $sth, @makes);
        $dbh = get_dbh();

        $sql = qq{SELECT make FROM $table};
        $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql);
        $sth->execute();
        while (my $make = $sth->fetchrow_array()) {
                push @makes, $make;
        }
        $sth->finish();
        $dbh->disconnect();

        return \@makes;
}

sub get_dbh {
        my ($dsn, $dbh);

        $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=cartalk";
        # better:
        # $dsn = q{DBI:mysql:mysql_read_default_file=/home/you/.my.cnf
+};

        $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn) || die $DBI::errstr;
        return $dbh;
}

sub makes_page {
        my $makes = shift;
        my ($make, $html);

        $make = (defined $q->param('make') && $q->param('make') =~ /^\
+w+$/)
                ? $q->param('make')
                : '';

        $html = $q->header() . $q->start_html('Your title') . $q->star
+t_form();
        $html .= $q->scrolling_list(-name   => 'make',
                                    '-values' => $makes,
                                    -size   => 6);
        $html .= $q->submit(-name => 'submit', -value => 'Submit!');
        $html .= "<P>Submitted: $make</P>\n";
        $html .= $q->end_form() . $q->end_html();

        return $html;
}

sub error_page {
        my $msg = shift;
        my ($html);

        $html = $q->header(). $q->start_html('Error!');
        $html .= $msg;
        $html .= $q->end_html();
        return $html;
}
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{
  my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT id, value FROM database");
  my $result = $sth->fethall_arrayref();

  print "<select name=\"selectboxname\"><option></option>";
  for (@$result) {
    print "<option value=\"$_->[0]\">$_->[1]</option>";
  }
  print "</select>";
}
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