For the syntax error, see my update reply above.

I'd not say that prepare stores an address. The following is taken from the DBI module docs

The DBI allows an application to ``prepare'' statements for later execution. A prepared statement is identified by a statement handle held in a Perl variable. We'll call the Perl variable $sth in our examples.

The typical method call sequence for a SELECT statement is:

  prepare,
    execute, fetch, fetch, ...
    execute, fetch, fetch, ...
    execute, fetch, fetch, ...

  $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT foo, bar FROM table WHERE baz=?");
  $sth->execute( $baz );
  while ( @row = $sth->fetchrow_array ) {
    print "@row\n";
  }
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  prepare,
    execute,
    execute,
    execute.

  $sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO table(foo,bar,baz) VALUES (?,?,?)"
+);
  while(<CSV>) {
    chop;
    my ($foo,$bar,$baz) = split /,/;
        $sth->execute( $foo, $bar, $baz );
  }
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You can view prepare as a kind of compilation step. (The INSERT query puts something into the table.

Hope this helps, -gjb-