You may want to look at something like Class::DBI or Tie::DBI to do the grunt work for you. But, to answer your question, yes you will need to add an UPDATE statement to the code you posted in order for your code to do what you want.

Seriously, I'd use Class::DBI. 

foreach my $row (MyCDBI::Class->retrieve_all) {
    if ($row->column1 =~ m/AR/i ) {
        $row->column2( 'AR' );
    }

    $row->update;
}

[download]
Done. :-)
My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

In reply to Re: Updating database question by dragonchild
in thread Updating database question by curtisb

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