When you create the table, you can specify that the primary key gets autoincremented... 
$dbh->do ("CREATE TABLE bookplateleaf
             (id        integer PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
              name      varchar(20), 
             )            
          ");

my $insert_name = prepare ("INSERT into bookplateleaf
                            name = ?");

$insert_name->execute("someNaME");

[download]
The DB will keep track of the primary key which is an integer and will auto increment it so that every "name" will have a unique id number.

Does that help?

Update: I not quite sure what this "box" this is. I could be that just one table will be all that you need.

$dbh->do ("CREATE TABLE bookplateleaf
             (id        integer PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
              name      varchar(20), 
              box       varchar(8192),
             )            
          ");

my $insert_row = prepare ("INSERT into bookplateleaf
                            name = ?,
                            box = ? ");
$insert_row->execute($name,$box);

[download]
For some DB's, like SQLite, the varchar(X), the X is just a "hint" and the actual data can be much larger. It is ok for name to appear more than once because it is not the primary key. There is another step to index the database according to more than the primary key - so perhaps that you can search for "name" efficiently.

I don't think that you are "stupid"..on the contrary for 30 days you have gotten quite far along!

In reply to Re^3: Concatenation of scaler reference by Marshall
in thread Concatenation of scaler reference by Largins

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