Change the final line of your code to

print $settings{'lastlog'} . "\n";
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and you should see the results you expect.

Yeah, it's a little more typing than what you sound like you're used to, but it's more than worth it. There is a technique in perl for using a variable as a variable name, but, as was mentioned earlier, it's bad, bad ju-ju. You don't want to get in the habit of going there, because as soon as you do, somebody's going to put the row 23, sql, MUHAHAHAH! into your database and clobber the query you're trying to read data from.