in reply to Class::DBI and how to wantarray...

If you know you want the first (and possibly only) hit, then you can force array context with parentheses: 
my ($match) = DVD::movie->search_like(title => 'Alien%');

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$match is now a DVD::movie and not a Class::DBI::Iterator.

Since you want to try several searches, i recommend trying out the techinique that Kake shows with Search::InvertedIndex in her perl.com article, How to Avoid Writing Code. Hope this helps. :)

UPDATE: embarrassing typo/misinfo corrected by PodMaster.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom