Anyone know if theres a way to get DBI to not quote a specific placeholder on a statement

Ignoring the flaws that others have already pointed out with your example, it's also worth remembering that DBI will not quote numbers.

This can cause problems when you have a CHAR column to which (sometimes) wish insert numbers. e.g if you had an ISBN column in a book table, the query:

  my $find_book = $dbh->prepare(qq{
     SELECT title FROM book WHERE isbn = ?
  });
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would be fine when passed

 my $isbn = "156884915X";
 my $title = $dbh->selectrow_array($find_book, undef, $isbn);
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But when passed

 my $isbn = 1565922433;
 my $title = $dbh->selectrow_array($find_book, undef, $isbn);
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it won't quote the ISBN. On some databases (definitely on MySQL) this will have the effect of not using the index on this column, massively slowing down this query - particularly if you have the 1.2 million books in print in this table!

Tony