Thanks for the comments. I'd like to answer your queries if I may.
The @sql is used because a sql string which consists of many parts including a "select * from" is built further up the code. The sql has been tuned for maximum efficiency, it's the Perl bit which hasn't. The code shown is a small subsection of the whole story. Apologies if I didn't make this clear. This is my first post on this site
I don't use  selectall_hashref because I found that for larger datasets this significantly reduces the performance of returning the dataset required. I appreciate that cosmetically the code is much more readable using the  selectall_hashref and for smaller datasets I do use this.

In reply to Re^2: Direct to spreadsheet by Anonymous Monk
in thread Direct to spreadsheet by Anonymous Monk

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