in reply to DBI and fetchrow_hashref

Try 'use strict', it will tell you where your error is.

You have two different variables, $hashrow and %hashrow. %hashrow is a hash, $hashrow is a reference to a hash.

The line print "$hashrow{phone}" attempts to print the value of %hashrow that corresponds to the 'phone' key (which has not been initialized). To dereference the hash, you need to use $hashrow->{phone}

perldoc perlref would be helpful, I'm sure.