You're welcome

<<';' is just like the <<EOF you've used elsewhere in your program, except the single quotes mean $ and @ won't be treated as variables, and it's ends with a line containing only ';' (and no spaces). In other words, the statement in question compiles to exactly the same as:

my $spdtrap_stmt = 
'SELECT id,'         . "\n" .
'       state,'      . "\n" .
'       city,'       . "\n" .
'       discription' . "\n" .
'  FROM speedtrap'   . "\n" .
' WHERE state = ?'   . "\n";
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SQL doesn't care about tabs (not used) and newlines outside of quote strings; it just treats them as another space. So the statement in question is functionally equivalent to what's below, but easier way to read:

my $spdtrap_stmt = 'SELECT id, state, city, discription FROM speedtrap
+ WHERE state = ?';
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