If you need to process all the rows, moot's code will work. If you only need to get the first row, then LIMIT (if available) and $row = $dbh->selctrow_arrayref() will work without a loop. If you need to grab the first row and then process the remaining rows, then grab the first row and then loop: my $first = $sth->fetch; while (my $non_first_row = $sth->fetch) { ... }.