If comment_date is indeed of type 'date' try something like:

my $statemenet = "select id
from comments
where comment_date >= to_date('01-jul-2002','dd-mon-yyyy')
and comment_date <= to_date('01-dec-2002',dd-mon-yyyy')";
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Running your original code and this code on an Oracle database produces the same results. For a table containing the following dates:

CDATE
---------
01-JAN-02
01-FEB-02
01-MAR-02
01-APR-02
01-MAY-02
01-JUN-02
01-JUL-02
01-AUG-02
01-SEP-02
01-OCT-02
01-NOV-02
01-DEC-02
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the above SQL statements both produce:

CDATE
---------
01-JUL-02
01-AUG-02
01-SEP-02
01-OCT-02
01-NOV-02
01-DEC-02
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If the comment_date is converted to varchar, the following result is produced:

no rows selected
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So that can't be the problem. You might want to run your query through an interactive session first and see what results it produces. My thought is that you are pulling the result set from a different query...

rdfield