in reply to Database queries w/lots of inputs.

Assuming you are talking about "Query by Example" another standard way, that has the main advantage of being very readable and easy to maintain is quite the following. But it only works good, if it is also O.K. to work with the LIKE statement:
# I assume the database handler $dbh is already initialized my $sth = $dbh->prepare(" SELECT * FROM table WHERE field1 LIKE ? AND field2 LIKE ? AND field3 LIKE ? AND field4 LIKE ? AND field5 LIKE ? "); for ($field1, $field2, $field3, $field4, $field5) { $_ = "" unless defined $_; $_ .= "%"; } $dbh->execute($field1, $field2, $field3, $field4, $field5); # But please choose better names than $fieldX :-)

Greetings,
Janek