I was just trying to get at 2 fields and change the data without having to create a new object. Which I did anyway...

I alway use strict. Yes it throws errors which just told me I wasn't accessing the structure right. But I already knew that. :)

References eat my lunch anyway. I use objects to dodge them to avoid @{}->[]->{} crap. So when I have to work with them(refs) I am always lost. my solution was as follows

$Query_Statement="select fname,lname,address,city,state,zip,phone,emai
+l FROM main order by lname,fname;";

    my $sth = $dbh->prepare($Query_Statement);
    $sth->execute();

    my @array;
    my $dataObjRef = \@array;

    while( my $array_ref = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref){
        #print ">>@$array_ref\n";

        my $fname = $array_ref->[0];
        my $lname = $array_ref->[1];


        my $total += length($fname);
        my $total += length($lname);

        if ((length($fname) + length($lname)) > 18){
            my $Fintial = substr($fname,0,1);
            if ((length($Fintial) + length($lname)) > 18){
                $lname = substr($lname,0,16);
            }
            $array_ref->[0] = $Fintial;
            $array_ref->[1] = $lname;

            #print "$Fintial    $lname\n";
        }
        else{
            next;
        }
        my @newArray = @$array_ref;
        push(@$dataObjRef, \@newArray);
    }

    $sth->finish();
    $dbh->disconnect or warn "Disconnection failed: $DBI::errstr\n";
    return $dataObjRef;
}
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