I'd either use 'select *' and fetch with fetchrow_hashref (my $value = $sth->fetchrow_hashref->{field_name}) so you don't need those ugly array assignments, or code the first option with prepare_cached in a subroutine, depending on how efficient this really needs to be:

sub get_value {
  my ($dbh, $field_name) = @_;
  my $sth = $dbh->prepare_cached("select $field from table where id = 
+?");
  my $value = $sth->fetchrow_array;
  $sth->finish;
  $value;
}
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