You know, if you used Template Toolkit, 90% of this code could be foisted off to the template

That still leaves 10% that I would have to deal with in my own code, so I would need a structure like this anyway. (Not to mention that I find doing anything fancier than straight substitution in template systems to end up as a frustrating exercise in creating a lousy language to avoid using a real one. No thank you...)

Also, although my example used DBI as a source and HTML as an output, this technique is not limited to those technologies.

Finally, one of the things I like about this techinique is that it centralizes the description and differences between all the columns in one place. If I want to rearrange columns in this scheme, I just swap hrefs around; using a template system, I need to change it in the template and in the loop.

I totally agree that templates are very handy when you have different people working on the code and the template. When it is just one person, I find it easier to have all the control in one place.