Wouldn't it be easier to read-modify your code if you had a sub that would just receive the vars required to build/update the form and that would return the html code?

I mean, having a clean sub to do the MySQL dialog, and then others to do the display (4 example). It is also, easier to use CGI syntax to build forms. Plus, you should check HTML::Template for a pre-built form that you could handle without mentioning any html in your code (sort of).