With more recent versions of DBI, you can do:

 my $sth = $dbh->prepare( $sql );

 # Fetch rows as arrayrefs
 my $rows_as_arrayrefs = $sth->fetchall_arrayref;

 # OR fetch all rows as hashrefs
 my $rows_as_hashrefs  = $sth->fetchall_arrayref( {} );
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Both invocations return an arrayref, but the first returns an arrayref of arrayrefs, the second an arrayref of hashrefs.

Chris
M-x auto-bs-mode