MySQL can do 90% of the work for you. Select statments can take a LIMIT clause. In MySQL, LIMIT 0,5 will return rows 1-5 matching the query, LIMIT 10,5 returns rows 11-15, etc. Check the docs or your favorite MySQL book for more information about the syntax.

All your Perl script really needs to do is calculate/keep track of the record offsets and generate the appropriate prev/next links from the offsets. Incidentally, you may want to look at DBIx::RecordSet, which does all of the above for you automatically (and more, it would seem). I've never used it so I can't vouch for it personally, but it's always worth a try.

Update: It seems the part of DBIx::RecordSet that you want to take a good look at is the PrevNextForm method.

blokhead