For most of the duplication you avoid with your fetch_count function, DBI has a built-in way of avoiding it: whenever you've got a query on which ->fetch_... is only invoked once, you can skip the separate ->prepare and ->execute by using a $db->select_... method.

So the 4 active lines in your function become just 1:

sub fetch_count
{
  my ($db, $table) = @_;

  $db->selectrow_array("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $table");
}
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It probably isn't worth writing a function for that, since there isn't that much duplication without it:

my $row1 = $dbh->selectrow_array('SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table_one');
my $row2 = $dbh->selectrow_array('SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table_two');
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But you could always put it in some sort of loop:

my ($row1, $row2)
  = map { $dbh->selectrow_array("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $_") }
  qw<table_one table_two>;
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(By the way, I think your ->fetch_arrayref is a typo.)

Smylers