Hmmm. I'd say fetchrow_hashref is not as bad as "select *" in most cases, since when you use "select *" you could end up getting a whole bunch of extra rows you don't want, or get the columns in a different order. Using the name of a column in fetchrow_hashref is essentially the same as using the name of the column in a SQL statement. (Of course I don't use it because of the performance hit...)