Man, DBIx::Recordset is sah-weet. No mind-entangling string operations, just a hash with slots for the things I need to do... In all honesty I like to code straight SQL since starting my read of SQL Queries for Mere Mortals but I hate trying to turn Perl data structures into SQL.

use strict;

use Data::Dumper;
use DBIx::Connect;
use DBIx::Recordset;


$DBIx::Recordset::Debug = 2;

my @scf = (902 .. 908, 917, 926 .. 928); # scf is a zip prefix

use vars qw(*zipset);

*zipset = DBIx::Recordset->Search
  ({
    '!DataSource' => DBIx::Connect->to('mdb_test'),
    '!Table'      => 'customer',
    '*zip'        => 'LIKE',
    'zip'         => [ map { $_ . '%' } @scf ],
    '$max'        => 10
   });

my $count;

while (my $rec = $zipset->Next) {
  print Dumper($rec);
  exit if ++$count > 10;
}
[download]

And the debugging output to make sure everything is copacetic:

        tbone@MDB:/data/tbone/maldunn/204209-007 perl query.pl
DB:  Use already open dbh for database=test;host=localhost (id=1, numO
+pen = 0)
DB:  'SELECT * FROM customer WHERE   (  (zip LIKE ?)  or  (zip LIKE ?)
+  or  (zip LIKE ?)  or  (zip LIKE ?)  or  (zip LIKE ?)  or  (zip LIKE
+ ?)  or  (zip LIKE ?)  or  (zip LIKE ?)  or  (zip LIKE ?)  or  (zip L
+IKE ?)  or  (zip LIKE ?))      LIMIT 0,11' bind_values=<902% 903% 904
+% 905% 906% 907% 908% 917% 926% 927% 928%> bind_types=<12 12 12 12 12
+ 12 12 12 12 12 12>
$VAR1 = {
          ...
        };
$VAR1 = {
          '...
        };
[download]

Carter's compass: I know I'm on the right track when by deleting something, I'm adding functionality.