Basically I'm trying to print the column headers from a db query. I can iterate through each row and using printf I can print out the data, but it doesn't work when I'm trying to print out the column headers.

eg: 

@row = $sth->fetchrow_array();
printf "%15s %12s %12s %12s %9s %5s $5s", @row;

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- produces a formated line of data from the database

But this same approach applied to the column headers prints only ARRAY(0x168218): 

@fieldNames = $sth->{NAME_uc};
printf "%15s %12s %12s %22s %9s %5s $5s", @fieldNames;

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It doesn't much seem to matter if I replace @fieldNames with $sth->{NAME_uc} or @$fieldNames, I still don't get the array interpreted as a list, despite the fact that this appears to be the same methodology used to display the row data.

What hoops am I supposed to be jumping through here? Iterating through the column name array is a poor option because then I'd have to manually format the whole thing which seems a huge waste of code.

In reply to printing an array reference by gryf

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