Secondly, the call to bind_columns is a bit off. This is supposed to be an array (see DBI docs)

my $rv = sth->bind_columns(\(undef,$uname,$fname,$fgroup,$dmod,$accts)
+ );
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Er... It's supposed to be a list. And taking a reference to a list (like you have done) makes a list of references (see perlref). So what you wrote was equivalent to what the original poster wrote, except your first argument is a ref to undef instead of undef itself.

    ## from perlref
    @list = (\$a, \@b, \%c);
    @list = \($a, @b, %c);    # same thing!
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You'll notice in the DBI docs that any use of bind_columns with an actual named array uses the form \( @array ) -- which also makes a list of references, and not an array reference. It's different than [ @array ] and \@array.

blokhead